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TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



Complete in Four Parts 



By 

Edward Carpenter 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

MITCHELL KENNERLEY 

MCMXXII 



NEW EDITION FROM NEW PLATES 

INTRODUCTION COPYRIGHT I922 
BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY 






^^* 






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1/ 



COMPOSITION, PLATES, PRESSWORK AND 

BINDING BY J. J. LITTLE & IVES COMPANY 

NEW YORK, U. S. A. 



SEP 25 11 

)C1A681890 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

EDWARD carpenter: BY CHARLES VALE I 

A NOTE BY THE AUTHOR XVII 

PART I 

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 3 

PART II: CHILDREN OF FREEDOM 

FREEDOM, BEAUTIFUL BEYOND COMPARE lOJ 
YORK MINSTER Io6 
SUNDAY MORNING AFTER CHURCH IO9 
HIGH IN MY CHAMBER 112 
DEEP BELOW DEEP II5 
EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE 11/ 

1 COME FORTH FROM THE DARKNESS 122 
SUNDAY MORNING NEAR A MANUFACTURING TOWN I29 
IN THE DRAWING ROOMS I30 
IN A MANUFACTURING TOWN 135 
WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEE? 137 
AS TO YOU, O MOON I40 
SQUINANCY WORT I43 
NOT OF MYSELF I45 
LO! I OPEN A DOOR I45 
BY THIS HEART 145 
AS ONE WHO FROM A HIGH CLIFF I46 
TO ONE IN TROUBLE 147 
THESE WAVES OF YOUR GREAT HEART 147 
THUS AS I YEARNED FOR LOVE I49 
ETERNAL HUNGER I50 
CHILD OF THE LONELY HEART I5I 
TO ONE WHO IS WHERE THE ETERNAL ARE I52 
THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT 155 
TO A STRANGER I56 
TO A FRIEND I56 
OF THE LOVE THAT YOU POURED FORTH 157 
AS A WOMAN OF A MAN 157 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

LOVE, TO WHOM THE POETS I58 
WHO YOU ARE I KNOW NOT 161 
HAVE FAITH iSz 

1 HEARD A VOICE I68 
I KNOW THAT YOU ARE SELF-CONSCIOUS 169 
WHO ARE YOU I69 
AMONG THE FERNS I70 
I HEARD THE VOICE OF THE WOODS I73 
THE WIND CHANTS WELL I76 
I AM A VOICE 177 
O SEA WITH WHITE LINES 177 
HOME 178 
OFF GASPE 179 
BY THE SHORE I80 
A MILITARY BAND I84 
WINGS 189 
ON AN ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP I9I 
BY LAKE WACHUSETT 200 
O MIGHTY MOTHER 203 
AFTER LONG AGES 2o6 

PART III: AFTER CIVILISATION 

we are a menace to you, o civilisation 245 

after civilisation 246 

the word democracy 249 

the meaning of it all 25i 

these populations 252 

andromeda 253 

the triumph of civilisation 254 

the dead christ 255 

christmas eve 256 

little heart within thy cage 257 

when i am near to you 258 

cradled in flame 258 

all night long 259 

of the past 259 

love's Vision 260 

nearer than ever now 260 

o thou whose form 261 

the elder soldier to the younger 261 

into the regions of the sun 263 

as it happened 264 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

PARTED LIPS 268 

SUMMER-HEAT 268 

A RIVEDERCI 268 

WHO WILL LEARN FREEDOM? 269 

AFTER ALL SUFFERING 27O 

WHEN A THOUSAND YEARS HAVE PASSED IJI 

A MESSAGE COMMITTED TO THE WAVES 272 

REST AT LAST 2/4 

THE WIND OF MAY 275 

O EARTH, SCENE OF WHAT TOIL 276 

A VOICE OVER THE EARTH 277 

IN THE CHAMBER OF BIRTH 285 

A COTTAGE AMONG THE HILLS 285 

ALICE 286 

BABY SONG 287 

EARLY MORNING 288 

THE GOLDEN WEDDING 289 

THE MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTER 29O 

A SPRIG OF ARISTOCRACY 29I 

A SCENE IN LONDON 29I 

S. JAMEs' PARK 292 

THE TWIN STATUES OF AMENOPHIS 294 

ARTEMIDORUS, FAREWELL 295 

FROM TURIN TO PARIS 297 

TO THE END OF TIME 303 

ON THE EVE OF DEPARTURE 303 

ARENZANO 304 

TENDER HEART 306 
THE CARTER 307 
THE STONE-CUTTER 308 
THE VOICE OF ONE BLIND 309 
A SONG IN OLD AGE 3IO 
IN EXTREME AGE 312 
AFTER THE DAY's WORK 313 

1 SAW A VISION 313 
ah! BLESSED IS HE THAT HATH ESCAPED 314 
THE GREAT LEADER 314 
I ACCEPT YOU 314 
SOL 315 
A GLIMPSE 315 
THE LONG DAY IN THE OPEN 316 
THE IDLER 316 
IN THE DEEP CAVE OF THE HEART 316 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

FLY messenger! THROUGH THE STREETS OF THE CITIES 318 

THE COMING OF THE LORD 319 

THE CURSE OF PROPERTY 322 

OVER THE GREAT CITY 323 

UNDERNEATH AND AFTER ALL 324 

A HARD SAYING 326 

NOT FOR A FEW MONTHS OR YEARS 326 

DISENTANGLEMENT 326 

THE MORTAL LOVER 329 

THE END OF LOVE 330 

A NEW LIFE 331 

THE LAW OF EQUALITY 332 

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE 333 

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE THAT ENTER HERE 334 

TO ONE DEAD 334 

OF ALL THE SUFFERING 335 

A LONG JOURNEY 337 

THE SECRET OF TIME AND SATAN 338 

BRIEF IS PAIN 344 

THE BODY AND THE BOOK 346 

PART IV: WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART 

BECAUSE THE STARRY LIGHTNINGS 348 

WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART 349 

FROM CAVERNS DARK 35O 

THE LAKE OF BEAUTY 352 

THE WANDERING PSYCHE 353 

I HEAR THY CALL, MYSTERIOUS BEING 354 

SO THIN A VEIL DIVIDES 355 

THE OPEN SECRET 356 

THE SONGS OF THE BIRDS, WHO HEARS 357 

A CHILD AT A WINDOW 359 

NIGHT 360 

APRIL 360 

LUCIFER 361 

THE OCEAN OF SEX 362 

AS THE GREEKS DREAMED 363 

IN A SCOTCH-FIR WOOD 364 

THE DREAM GOES BY 365 

SURELY THE TIME WILL COME 366 

THE ONE FOUNDATION 368 

A MIGHTIER THAN MAMMON 371 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

O LITTLE SISTER HEART 384 

FORMS ETERNAL AS THE MOUNTAINS 385 

SPENDING THE NIGHT ALONE 385 

O JOY DIVINE OF FRIENDS 386 

O CHILD OF URANUS 386 

ONE AT A TIME 388 

THE DEAD COMRADE 389 

PHILOLAUS TO DIOCLES 390 

HAFIZ TO THE CUP-BEARER 393 

IN THE STONE-FLOORED WORKSHOP 394 

THE TRYSTING 396 

THE LOVER FAR ON THE HILLS 398 

THE BABE 399 

GRACIOUS MOTHER 4OI 

1 SAW A FAIR HOUSE 402 
A DREAM OF HUMAN LIFE 404 
THE COAST OF LIGURIA 40S 
EASTER DAY ON MT. MOUNIER 407 
AT MENTONE 408 
MONTE CARLO 4II 
INDIA, THE WISDOM-LAND 4IS 
TANZBODELI 417 
A VILLAGE CHURCH 420 
SHEFFIELD 424 
A LANCASHIRE MILL-HAND 426 
A TRADE 428 
THE PLOUGHBOY 429 
THE JACKDAW 430 
BY THE MERSEY 43 1 
IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM LIBRARY 433 
EMPIRE 435 
THE BRITISH, A, D. I9OI 44O 
PORTLAND 441 
CHINA, A. D. 1900 444 
STANDING BEYOND TIME 449 
WHO BUT THE LOVER SHOULD KNOW 4SO 
THE EVERLASTING NOW 452 
NOW IS THE ACCEPTED TIME 452 
A SUMMER DAY 453 
THE CENTRAL CALM 454 
WIDENING CIRCLES ' 455 
WHEN I LOOK UPON YOUR FACES 455 
LIFE BEHIND LIFE 456 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

THE STUPID OLD BODY 457 

THE WANDERING LUNATIC MIND 458 

AS A MOULD FOR SOME FAIR FORM 459 

NOTHING LESS THAN ALL 460 

BELIEVE YOURSELF A WHOLE 462 

THE BODY WITHIN THE BODY 463 

IN AN OLD QUARRY 466 

THE SOUL TO THE BODY 466 

TO BECOME A CREATOR 469 

AFTER FIFTY YEARS 471 

OUT OF THE HOUSE OF CHILDHOOD 472 

LITTLE BROOK WITHOUT A NAME 474 

LO! WHAT A WORLD I CREATE 477 



EDWARD CARPENTER 

Edward Carpenter was born at Brighton, England, 
August 29, 1844. He was educated at Brighton College 
and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, taking his degree — as 
tenth wrangler in the mathematical tripos — in 1868. For 
some time fellow and lecturer at Trinity Hall, he seemed 
contented to follow the conventional course, adapting him- 
self quietly to the system of compromises and contradic- 
tions supposed to represent the ideals of Christianity and 
civilization. He was duly ordained, and held a curacy 
under the Rev. Frederick D. Maurice. But a nature so 
elemental in its need for light, air and truth could not long 
be confined in a mould. Carpenter began to realize that 
he could not do his daily work satisfactorily under such 
limitations; that he could not do his daily living satisfac- 
torily, either. In 1874 he relinquished his orders and fellow- 
ship, and left Cambridge. For some years he lectured in 
connection with the University Extension Movement in 
northern towns, incidentally studying social and economic 
conditions, and coming close to the raw human material 
which feeds those busy, grimy manufacturing centres. He 
contracted the habit of thinking, — and also the habit of 
dreaming. He became, to use his own words, one of those — 
"who dream the impossible dream, and it comes true; who 
hear the silent prayers; who accept the trampling millions, 
as the earth, dreaming, accepts the interminable feet of her 
children; who dream the dream which all men always de- 



11 EDWARD CARPENTER 

clare futile; who dream the hour which is not yet on earth, 
and lo ! it strikes." 

In 1883 he settled on a small farm near Sheffield, and 
devoted his time to literary work, market gardening, sandal 
making, and socialist propaganda. The next year he visited 
the United States and met Walt Whitman, whose genius 
he had been one of the first to recognize. Returning to 
his own country, he continued to write his books and cul- 
tivate his garden, sometimes straying into fields which it 
was not considered quite polite to explore. Indeed, thirty 
years ago Edward Carpenter was frequently denounced as an 
impossible eccentric, a teacher of dangerous and damnable 
doctrines. That was encouraging. To-day the impossible 
eccentric is generally accepted as a man of wide and wise 
humanity, simple, sane, inspiring and inspired; not free, 
fortunately, from faults, but altogether free from cant and 
hypocrisy; with a deep-rooted love for and belief in his 
fellow-men, and a love no less real and no less essential for 
the whole brotherhood of living things, hunted or hunt- 
ing according to their kind. 

His works have an international circulation^ Amongst 
them, besides "Towards Democracy," are "Love's Coming- 
of-Age," "Angels' Wings," and "The Drama of hove and 
Death." "Towards Democracy" is the most notable. The 
first edition, containing the title poem, was slenderer than 
those that have succeeded it; but as the years passed and the 
vision widened, other pieces were gradually added, until the 
volume assumed its present and final form. It expresses 
what the poet felt, found and lived for, in a world of many 
shibboleths and few sincerities. Congruenter naturce vivere 
is a trite saying, but one of the rarest to be translated into 
practice. Carpenter has tested it faithfully for the greater 



EDWARD CARPENTER iii 

part of a long life, according to his conception of the full 
meaning of the word Nature; and he asserts that the prin- 
ciple is sound. It has given him serenity and faith, and 
enabled him to give to the world in return the best that 
was in him; and that is something to be thankful for, — 
as Mrs. Havelock Ellis, who knew him so intimately, was 
thankful. 

*'My personal tribute," she wrote, "to the work of 
Edward Carpenter is, that never once for more than twenty- 
five years, in whatever straits life has hurled me, either 
from joy or pain, have I gone to his 'Towards Democracy,' 
and come away in the same mood. It is surely the epistle 
of a life, and the Gospel of a life to be, when love has solved 
the difficulties of pain, jealousy, separation and death, and 
when the great Mother Nature is recognized as the real 
Healer. . . . No one can read the book and remain quite 
the same. The human being and the seer speak to the 
mortal and the immortal within us all. . . ." 

Love is the keynote of Carpenter's life and work. He 
has the simplicity and universality of Christ, the same kind 
of courtesy and comprehension, the same disinclination to 
exclude publicans and sinners from the pale of humanity, 
and something at least of the same power of healing. From 
him, too, virtue has gone out; and he knows it. 

Through a thousand beautiful forms — so beautiful! — 

through the gates of a thousand hearts — emancipated 

freed we pass on: 

I and my joy shall surely pass on. 

How much did Edward Carpenter owe to Walt Whit- 
man? The question is almost inevitable, and Carpenter 
himself has tried to answer it. He compares Whitman's 



IV EDWARD CARPENTER 

influence with that of the sun or the moon — too deeply 
rooted and ramifying too complexly to be traced and 
tabulated. He first came across William Michael Rossetti's 
selection from "Leaves of Grass" while he was still at 
Cambridge, in 1868 or 1869, and he read that and the 
original editions continuously for ten years. He never met 
with any other book (with the exception perhaps of 
Beethoven's sonatas) which he could read and re-read as 
he could this one. 

"I find it difficult to imagine what my life would have 
been without it. 'Leaves of Grass' 'filtered and fibred' 
my blood; but I do not think I ever tried to imitate it or 
its style. Against the inevitable drift out of the more 
classic forms of verse into a looser and freer rhythm I 
fairly fought, contesting the ground inch by inch during a 
period of seven years in numerous abortive and mongrel 
creations — till in 1881 I was finally compelled into the form 
(if such it can be called) of 'Towards Democracy.' I 
did not adopt it because it was an approximation to the 
form of 'Leaves of Grass.' Whatever resemblance there 
may be between the rhythm, style, thoughts, construction, 
etc., of the two books, must I think be set down to a deeper 
similarity of emotional atmosphere and intension in the 
two authors — even though that similarity may have sprung 
and no doubt largely did spring out of the personal in- 
fluence of one upon the other." 

But their temperaments, standpoints and antecedents are 
so entirely diverse that he cannot imagine there is much 
real resemblance to be traced. "Whitman's full-blooded, 
copious, rank, masculine style must always make him one 
of the world's greatest originals. . . . He has the ampli- 
tude of the Earth itself. . . . He often indeed reminds one 



EDWARD CARPENTER v 

of a great quarry on a mountainside — the great shafts of 
sunlight and shadows, the primitive face of the rock 
itself. . . ." "Towards Democracy," he thinks, has a 
milder radiance, as of the moon compared with the sun 
— allowing you to glimpse the stars behind. The comparison 
is as just as it is suggestive. It is one of the beauties of 
moonlight that it does not obscure the firmament, but re- 
veals it. 

With regard to the form of "Towards Democracy," Car- 
penter's further reflections on Whitman (in "Angels' 
Wings") may be applied in a large degree to his own work: 
certainly they help to show how he was urged toward a 
medium with which he could be content. Whitman, he 
says, accepted heartily the traditional literary forms. Then 
why did he not use them? Yet, why should he? Anyone 
who reads intelligently such a poem as Shelley's "Adonais," 
must see that the high-water mark of expression in rhymx 
and metre of this kind has already been reached. Nothing 
more perfect in that line can possibly be done. Other work 
may be done, and has been done, within the same limits of 
form and expression; but no work can be done in the same 
form which shall at the same time enlarge the boundary 
of human expression. Shelley's best verse, prophetically 
inspired, is iridescent, like the clouds of sunrise, with all 
the glory which its form could possibly bear. 

But Whitman had new things to say which had not 
been said before. He had to enlarge the boundary of 
human expression; and not knowing how to do this he re- 
verted to the primitive law — the law that inspired Biblical 
and all early poetry — namely, that human feeling (if strong 
enough, clear enough, direct enough) compels speech to 
its own rhythm. 



vi EDWARD CARPENTER 

Whitman had the tramp of nations to put Into his verse; 
the whole gamut of human emotion and experience, from 
end to end, without omission or concealment; an intense 
consciousness of the Actual, the living Whole of the Uni- 
verse. . . . His verse inspired with such burdens escapes 
from formal laws, and comes running in, line after line, line 
after line, as the waves of the sea come, glancing In beauty 
— and each wave, you feel, could not be different from what 
it Is. That Is the essential thing — each wave of the sea 
is held there in its form by the whole of Nature. 

Whitman's verse In Its most successful passages, so mag- 
nificent In its effects, so democratic In feeling, so demo- 
cratic In form, is more absolute in expression, more real 
in its content, burns brighter in the nearness of sunrise, 
even than Shelley's; and yet lies so near to Nature and 
the innocent naivete of the speech of a child, that some 
people are Inclined to deny to It the quality of Art at 
all. . . . 

There can be no doubt that the feeling which inspired 
these reflections was the feeling which made the form of 
"Towards Democracy" inevitable. It was an open-air book, 
as Carpenter explains. "The more universal feeling which 
I sought to convey refused itself within doors; nor could 
I at any time or by any means persuade the rhythm or 
style of expression to render itself up within a room — 
tending there to break back always Into distinct metrical 
forms." He could feel the difference at once, in merely pass- 
ing through a doorway. Many people have felt similarly the 
difference between the roof of a room and the roof of 
the world. 

But though Carpenter has his own moods, derived from 
the deeper needs of his nature, he Is not a faddist. His 



EDWARD CARPENTER vii 

sandal-wearing and vegetarianism are not the main features 
of his message to his age; they are simply characteristic 
details. He is a vegetarian, not because the eating of flesh 
is necessarily an accursed thing, but because the callousness 
and cruelty, the utter ugliness, at present bound up with 
the slaughter of animals and the traffic in their carcases, 
are undeniably revolting. His plea for a minimum of 
clothing is an invitation for a return, not to savagery, but 
to common sense. He has discarded all the pretences of 
living in order to live in reality; and he is serenely happy, 
because the inner and outer life harmonize, instead of one 
being merely a mask for the other. But he has a vision 
of a more consummate harmony, which he reveals in his 
portrayal of Beethoven in ''Angels' Wings." 

"When one considers the intense fusion into one whole 
which characterizes the musical handling of all his later 
works; when one considers the democratic drift of his 
philosophic and social speculations, as evidenced by the 
Third or the Ninth Symphony; it is difficult not to think 
that he saw (or perhaps one should say felt) that as the 
various movements, motives, melodies, phrases, aye, even 
separate notes, of a great symphony, all have their distinct 
individualities, and yet are parts of one absolute unity, — 
so the universe, so the society of mankind, realizes or is 
on its way to realize, the same harmony, the union of 
myriads of distinct beings in one Life. 

"I say felt, because Beethoven, as a great artist, wrote 
not at the command of his brain, but of his heart. ... As 
he knit the most diverse emotions and motives together 
in his symphonies and sat above and beyond them all like 
a god above his own creation, showing their harmonious 
relation to each other — so he knew (for in his music he 



viii EDWARD CARPENTER 

had been there) that underneath the diverse and conflict- 
ing types of human kind there was an everlasting and 
indestructible relation — a Life equally near to them all." 
It is this vision which Carpenter tries to communicate, 
through manifold variations, in ''Towards Democracy"; 
and he too (as he affirms of Beethoven) has written rather 
at the urging of his heart than of his brain — though the 
brain was not idle. His is no mere academic interest in 
mankind as material for scientific analysis or ingenious 
speculations. He is one with his brothers, in their joys, sor- 
rows, sins, achievements, failures; not an observer only, aloof 
and self-sufficient; but incorporate with each creature in 
its pain or gladness, weakness or strength. 

What sorrovj is there but I have shared it? 
What grief but it has removed an obstruction between 
me and some one else? 

Look in my face and see. You cannot bar me now. 
I pass all doorSj and am where I would be. 

And again: 

/ work on the hills once more with the slave and the 
freedman among the vines, I mix the mortar for them 
that build the aqueduct: 

The lover and his girl lean against my breast in 
the moonlight long ages back as now; 

The face of the mother understands my face a thou- 
sand and ten thousand years ago, as it does to-day; 

I am the cream-colored ox with mild eyes, and I 
am the driver who curses and goads it; 

I am the lover and the loved — / have lost and found 
my identity. 

Though he draws vivid word-pictures of grim condi- 



EDWARD CARPENTER ix 

tions, he speaks often of joy, and often of death. Death 
is a gateway. But will man still retain his identity be- 
yond — the identity which Carpenter stretches so elastically 
in some of his poems? He is more restrained in his prose, 
weighing the possibilities carefully. Admitting the great 
probability of the existence of an after-death state, and 
of a survival of some kind, the question arises : Is that sur- 
vival in any sense personal or individual? or does it belong, 
so to speak, to some formless region, either below^ or above 
person al i t}' ? It is conceivable that there may be survival 
of the outer and beggarly elements of the mind, below per- 
sonality; and it is conceivable that the deepest and most 
central core of the man may survive, far beyond and 
above personality; but in either case the individual existence 
may not continue. The eternity of the All-soul or Self 
of the universe is, he takes it, a basic fact. That being 
granted, it follows that if the soul of each human being 
roots down ultimately into the All-self, the core of each 
soul must partake of the eternal nature. But so far 
as it does so, it may be beyond all reach or remembrance 
of personality. 

"Such a conclusion — whatever force of conviction may 
accompany it — is certainly not altogether satisfactory. I 
remember that once — in the course of conversation with 
a lady on this very subject — she remarked that though she 
thought there would be a future life, she did not believe 
in the continuance of individuality. 'What do you be- 
lieve in, then?* said I. 'Oh,' she replied, 'I think we 
shall be a sort of Happy Mass!' And I have always since 
remembered that expression." * 

Naturally. But though the idea of a happy mass may 

* "The Drama of Love and Death": Edward Carpenter. 



X EDWARD CARPENTER 

have its charms, it does not quite satisfy our feelings or 
our intelligence. There is a desire for something more 
personal and less promiscuous. The solution may lie in 
deeper knowledge of the two selves with which we are 
already acquainted — the supraliminal and subliminal ; the 
self of the faqade and the front window, and the more 
intimate, though more hidden, self to which we owe "the 
wonderful flashes of intuition, the complex combinations of 
ideas, which at times leap fully formed and with a kind 
of authority into the field of man's waking consciousness." * 
These flashes and inspirations "obviously proceed from a 
deep intelligence of some kind, lying below, and are the 
product of an immensely extended and rapid survey of 
things, brought to a sudden focus." * They do not proceed 
from the conscious brain, but are felt by the latter to come 
from beyond it. They are, in the language of Myers, "up- 
rushes from the subliminal self." 

"That we should have, all of us, this magic source some- 
where buried within — this Aladdin's lamp, this vase of the 
Djinns, this Pandora box of evil as well as of good — 
is indeed astounding; and must cause us, when we have once 
fully realized the fact, to envisage life quite differently. 
It must cause us to feel that our very ordinary and daily self 
— w'hich we know so well (and which sometimes we even 
get a little tired of) — is only a fraction, only a flag and a 
signal, of that great presence which we really are, that 
great Mass-man who lies unexplored behind the very visible 
and actual. Difficult or impossible as this being may be 
to define, enormously complex as it probably is, and far- 
reaching, and hard to gauge, yet we see that it is there, 
undeniably there — a being that apparently includes f^r ex- 

*"The Drama of Love and Death." 



EDWARD CARPENTER xi 

tremes of faculty and character, running parallel to the con- 
scious self from low to high levels, having in its range of 
manifestation the most primitive desires and passions, and 
the highest feats of intellect and enthusiasm; and while 
at times capable of accepting the most frivolous suggestions 
and of behaving in a humorous or merely capricious and 
irresponsible manner, at other times capable of taking most 
serious command and control of the whole physical organ- 
ism, and as far as the spiritual organism is concerned, 
of rising to the greatest heights of prophecy and inspira- 
tion." * 

We must include, then, in this problem of survival, both 
the ordinary upper and conscious self, and the deep-lying 
subconscious (or superconscious) being. The exact relation 
of these two selves to each other is a matter not yet under- 
stood. It may be that the subliminal self is destined to 
become conscious in our ordinary sense of the word. It 
may be, on the other hand, that the conscious self is destined 
to rise into the much wider consciousness of the underlying 
self. There is a great deal to suggest that the everyday 
self is only the front as it were of the great wave of life, 
and that the brain consciousness is only a very special in- 
strument for dealing with the surroundings and condi- 
tions of our terrestrial existence — an instrument which will 
surrender much of its value at death and on mergence with 
the larger and differently constituted consciousness which 
under-runs and sustains it. That the two selves are in 
constant communication with each other, and that they 
are both intelligent in some sense, is obvious from the facts 
of suggestion, by which often the lightest whisper so to 
speak from the upper is understood and attended to by 

* "The Drama of Love and Death." 



xli EDWARD CARPENTER 

the under self; while, on the other hand, the under self 
communicates with the upper, sometimes by inner voices 
heard and visions seen, sometimes by automatic actions, 
as in dreams or trance writing, sometimes by sounds and 
apparitions so powerful as to appear at least external. 

"So we cannot but think that the question of survival 
may ultimately resolve itself very much into the question 
of the more complete and effectual understanding between 
these different portions of the self. When they come into 
clear relation with each other, when the unit-man and the 
Mass-man merge into a perfect understanding and har- 
mony, when they both become conscious of their affiliation 
to the great Self of the universe, then the problem will 
be solved — or we may perhaps say, the problem will cease 
to exist." * 

It will be seen that Carpenter is scarcely dogmatic in his 
theology or magisterial in his theorizing. He has passed 
beyond the primitive heaven of harps, and the super-clergy- 
man who represents the Miltonic deity. But the All-soul, 
the great Self of the universe, is to him a basic fact; 
and the fruition of life is the harmony of man, humanity, 
and the eternal God-Self in which they are rooted. That 
conception is enough to give him peace. He does not fret 
himself vainly because man has not yet succeeded in measur- 
ing the infinite with a two-foot rule. The boundaries of 
knowledge will be steadily extended: in the meantime, 
what we know is valid, so far as it goes; and in dreams 
we may go further still. And it is indeed in his dreams — 
in those apparent inspirations which transcend common ex- 
perience — that Carpenter has seen and sung his vision of 
a new world and a new life, a present anticipation of the 

* "The Drama of Love and Death." 



EDWARD CARPENTER xiii 

ideal harmony which sums up all. But it is not a fantastic 
and chimerical order which he pictures. He is eminently 
practical, and he proves that the new life can be lived, by 
the simple process of living it. 

Yes — by one man, perhaps, or by a few men, the new 
order may be illustrated satisfactorily. But does it follow 
that all men — or the majority of men — could safely adopt 
such principles? Is it not the exception which establishes 
success ? 

Carpenter believes that he is living the normal life, not 
an abnormal one. In his vision of democracy, he sees all 
men living a normal life. But — 

Do not hurry: have faith. 

[Whither indeed should we hurry? is it not zwell 
here? 

A little shelter from the storm, a stack of fuel for 
winter use, a few handfuls of ffrain and fruit — 

And lo! the glory of all the earth is oursJ] 

He does not ask, it will be observed, for excessive luxuries. 
Though the body is beautiful to him — the clean, uncramped, 
unswathed body, familiar with sun and air — he will not 
pamper it. Allow it a little less than it seems to require, 
ignore it when it is too clamant, — and see how perfectly 
it will fulfil its purpose, how responsive rather than irre- 
sponsible it will be. This is not a new doctrine, but Car- 
penter gives it a rememberable setting. And it is perhaps 
well that he should do so, for many hasten to misunder- 
stand a tolerance so comprehensive as his. 

There is no desire or indulgence that is forbidden; 
there is not one good and another evil — all are alike in 
that respect; 



xiv EDWARD CARPENTER 

In place all are to be used. 

Yet in using be not entangled in them; for then 
already they are bad, and will cause thee suffering. 

His tolerance is wide because his experience has been wide, 
and because it has been accompanied by those imaginative 
insights which are almost incommunicable. But Carpenter 
does communicate the pictures he has seen, as he has seen 
them. Consider this, as an arresting coup d'ceil — 

/ see all over the land the beautiful centuries- grown 
villages and farmhouses nestling down among their 
trees; the dear old lanes and footpaths and the great 
clean highways connecting ; the fields, every one to the 
people known by its own name, and hedgerows and 
little straggling copses, and village greens; I see the 
great sweeps of country, the rich wealds of Sussex and 
Kent, the orchards and deep lanes of Devon, the wil- 
low-haunted fiats of Huntingdon, Cambridge and South 
Lincolnshire; Sherwood Forest and the New Forest, 
and the light pastures of the North and South Downs; 
the South and Midland and Eastern agricultural dis- 
tricts, the wild moorlands of the North and West, and 
the intermediate districts of coal and iron. 

The oval-shaped manufacturing heart of England 
lies below me; at night the clouds flicker in the lurid 
glare; I hear the sob and gasp of pumps and the solid 
beat of steam and tilt-hammers ; I see streams of pale 
lilac and saffron-tinted fire. I see the swarthy Vulcan- 
reeking towns, the belching chimneys, the slums, the 
liquor-shops, chapels, dancing saloons, running grounds, 
and blameless remote villa residences. 

And here is Sheffield. 



EDWARD CARPENTER xv 

Dead leaden sound of forffe-hammers. 

Gaping mouths of chimneys^ 

Lumbering and rattling of huge drays through the 
streets. 

Pallid faces moving to and fro in myriads . . . 

The drunkard reeling past; the file-cutter humped 
over his bench, with ceaseless skill of chisel and ham- 
mer cutting his hundred thousand file-teeth per day — 
lead-poison and paralysis slowly creeping through his 
frame; 

The gaunt woman in the lens-grinding shop, pre- 
paring spectacle-glasses without end for the grindstone 
— in eager dumb mechanical haste, for her work is 
piecework; 

Barefoot skin-diseased children picking the ash- 
heaps over, sallow hollow-cheeked young men, prema- 
turely aged ones. 

The attic, the miserable garret under the defective 
roof. 

The mattress on the floor, the few coals in the corner. 

White jets of steam, long ribbons of black smoke. 

Furnaces glaring through the night, beams of lurid 
light thrown obliquely up through the smoke, 

Nightworkers returning home wearied in the dismal 
dawn . . . 

There are faults in "Towards Democracy." That goes 
without saying, but I will say it, to emphasize the fact. I 
wonder, however, if there would be any noticeable agree- 
ment among critics as to the precise instances. Perhaps not : 
for this is a book which appeals to many people in many 
ways; and what one does not care for, may be another's 



xvi EDWARD CARPENTER 

favorite passage. But there can be no doubt that in the 
book as a whole, Edward Carpenter has fulfilled his mis- 
sion and expressed his message as he desired. There is a 
light round it, and a light in it; and that light will draw 
men of good will through the darkness of the years. 

O gracious Mother^ in thy vast eternal sunlight 
Heal uSj thy foolish children, from our sins; 
Who heed thee not, but careless of thy Presence 
Turn our bent backs on thee^ and scratch and scrabble 
In ash-heaps for Salvation. 

Charles Vale 



A NOTE ON "TOWARDS DEMOCRACY" 

BY THE AUTHOR 

Having sometimes been asked questions about "Towards 
Democracy" which I found It difficult to answer, I will try 
and shape a few thoughts about It here. 

Quite a long time ago (say, when I was about 25, and 
living at Cambridge) I wanted to write some sort of a 
book which should address Itself very personally and closely 
to any one who cared to read It — establish, so to speak, an 
Intimate personal relation between myself and the reader; 
and during succeeding years I made several attempts to 
realise this Idea — of which beginnings one or two In verse 
may be found In a little volume entitled "Narcissus and 
Other Poems," now well out of print, which I published 
In 1873. None of these attempts satisfied me, however, 
and after a time I began to think the quest was an unrea- 
sonable one — unreasonable because while It might not be 
difficult for any one with a pliant and sympathetic disposi- 
tion to touch certain chords In any given individual that he 
might meet, it seemed Impossible to hope that a book — 
which cannot In any way adapt Itself to the Idiosyncrasies of 
Its reader — could find the key of the personalities Into 
whose hands it should happen to come. For this it would 
be necessary to suppose, and to find, an absolutely common 
ground to all Individuals (all, at any rate, who might have 

xvii 



xviii TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

reached a certain stage of thought and experience) — and to 
write the book on and from that common ground; but this 
seemed at that time quite impracticable. 

Years followed, more or less eventful, with flight from 
Cambridge, and university lectures carried on in the Pro- 
vincial Towns, and so forth ; but of much dumbness as re- 
gards writing; and Inwardly full of tension, and suffering. 
At last, early in 1881, no doubt as the culmination and re- 
sult of struggles and experiences that had been going on, I 
became conscious that a mass of material was forming with- 
in me. Imperatively demanding expression — though what ex- 
actly its expression would be I could not then have told. 
I became for the time overwhelmingly conscious of the dis- 
closure within of a region transcending In some sense the 
ordinary bounds of personality, In the light of which region 
my own Idiosyncrasies of character — defects, accomplish- 
ments, limitations, or what not — appeared of no Importance 
whatever — an absolute Freedom from mortality, accom- 
panied by an indescribable calm and joy. 

I also Immediately saw, or rather felt, that this region of 
Self existing in me existed equally (though not always 
equally consciously) In others. In regard to It the mere 
diversities of temperament which ordinarily distinguish and 
divide people dropped away and became Indifferent, and a 
field was opened in which all might meet, in which all were 
truly Equal. Thus I found the common ground which I 
wanted ; and the two words, Freedom and Equality, came for 
the time being to control all my thought and expression. 

The necessity for space and time to work this out grew so 
strong that In April of that year I threw up my lecturing 
employment. Moreover, another necessity had come upon 
me which demanded the latter step — the necessity, namely, 



A NOTE xix 

for an open air life and manual work. I could not finally 
argue with this any more than with the other, I had to give 
in and obey. As it happened at the time I mention I was 
already living in a little cottage on a farm (at Bradway, near 
Sheffield) with a friend and his family, and doing farm- 
work in the intervals of my lectures. When I threw up 
the lecturing I had everything clear before me. I knocked 
together a sort of wooden sentinel-box, in the garden, and 
there, or in the fields and the woods, all that spring and 
summer, and on through the winter, by day and sometimes 
by night, in sunlight or in rain, by frost and snow and all 
sorts of grey and dull weather, I wrote "Towards Democ- 
racy" — or at any rate the first and longer poem that goes 
by that name. 

By the end of 1881 this was finished — though it was 
worked over and patched a little in the early part of 1882; 
and I remember feeling then that, defective and halting and 
incoherent in expression as it was, still if it succeeded in 
rendering even a half the splendour which inspired it, it 
would be good, and I need not trouble to write anything 
more (which, with due allowance for the said "if," I even 
now feel was a true and friendly intimation) ! 

The writing of this and its publication (in 1883) got a 
load off my mind which had been weighing on it for years 
— a sense of oppression and anxiety which I had constantly 
suffered from before — and which I believe, in its different 
forms, is a common experience in the early part of life. 

In this first poem were embodied with considerable alter- 
ations and adaptations a good number of casual pieces, which 
I had written (merely under stress of feeling and without 
any particular sense of proportion) during several preceding 
years. They now found their interpretation under the 



XX TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

steady and clear light of a new mood or state of feeling 
which previously had only visited me fitfully and with 
clouded beams. The whole of ''Towards Democracy" — I 
may say, speaking broadly and including the later pieces — 
has been written under the domination of this mood. I 
have tested and measured everything by it; it has been the 
sun to which all the images and conceptions and thoughts 
used have been as material objects reflecting its light. And 
perhaps this connects itself with the fact that it has been 
so necessary to write in the open air. The more universal 
feeling which I sought to convey refused itself from me 
within doors; nor could I at any time or by any means per- 
suade the rhythm or style of expression to render itself up 
within a room — tending there always to break back into 
distinct metrical forms; which, however much I admire 
them in certain authors, and think them myself suitable for 
certain kinds of work, were not what I wanted, and did not 
express for me the feeling which I sought to express. This 
fact (of the necessity of the open air) is very curious, and 
I cannot really explain it. I only know that it is so, quite 
indubitable and insurmountable. I can feel it at once, the 
difference, in merely passing through a doorway — but I can- 
not explain it. Always especially the sky seemed to con- 
tain for me the key, the inspiration; the sight of it more 
than anything gave what I wanted (sometimes like a ver- 
itable lightning-flash coming down from it onto my paper — 
I a mere witness, but agitated with strange transports). 

But if I should be asked — as I have sometimes been asked 
— What is the exact nature of this mood, of this illuminant 
splendour, of which you speak? I should have to reply that 
I can give no very concise and clearcut answer. The whole 
of "Towards Democracy" is an endeavour to give it utter- 



A NOTE xxi 

ance; any mere single sentence, or direct definition, would 
be of no use — rather indeed would tend to obscure by limit- 
ing. All I can say is that there seems to be a vision pos- 
sible to man, as from some more universal standpoint, free 
from the obscurity and localism which especially connect 
themselves with the passing clouds of desire, fear, and all 
ordinary thought and emotion ; in that sense another and 
separate faculty; and as vision always means a sense of 
light, so here is a sense of inward light, unconnected of 
course with the mortal eye, but bringing to the eye of the 
mind the impression that it sees^ and by means of a medium 
which washes as it were the interior surfaces of all objects 
and things and persons — how can I express it? — and yet 
this is most defective, for the sense is a sense that one is 
those objects and things and persons that one perceives, (and 
even that one is the whole universe,) — a sense in which 
sight and touch and hearing are all fused in identity. Nor 
can the matter be understood without realising that the 
whole faculty is deeply and intimately rooted on the far side 
of the moral and emotional nature, and beyond the thought- 
region of the brain.^ 

And now with regard to the "I" which occurs so freely 
in this book. In this and in other such cases the author is 
naturally liable to a charge of egotism — and I personally do 

* I do not know any description in its way better than one 
attributed to Tennyson : — ^"All at once, as it were, out of the 
intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality 
itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, 
and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, 
the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was 
an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality — if so 
it were — seeming no extinction but the only true life. I am 
ashamed of my feeble description. Have I not said the state is 
utterly beyond words. '^" Compare also his poem, "The Ancient 
Sage," 



xxii TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

not feel disposed to combat any such charge that may be 
made. That there are mere egotisms and vanities embodied 
in these pages I do not for a moment doubt ; and that so 
far as they exist they mar the expression and purpose of the 
book I also do not doubt. But the existence of these things 
does not affect the real question: What or Who in the 
main is the "I" spoken of? 

To this question I must also frankly own that I can give 
no answer. I do not know. That the word is not used 
in the dramatic sense is all I can say. The "I" is myself — > 
as well as I could find words to express myself: but what 
that Self is, and what its limits may be; and therefore what 
the self of any other person is and what its limits may be — I 
cannot tell. I have sometimes thought that perhaps the 
best work one could do — if one felt at any time enlarge- 
ments and extensions of one's effo — was to simply record 
these, as faithfully as might be ; leaving others, the science- 
man and the philosopher, to explain — and feeling confident 
that what really existed in oneself would be found to exist 
either consciously or in a latent form in other people. And 
I will say that I have in these records above all endeavored 
to be genuine. If I have said "I, Nature" it was because 
at the time, at any rate, I felt "I, Nature"; if I have said 
"I am equal with the lowest," it was because I could not 
express what I felt more directly than by those words. The 
value of such statements can only appear by time; if they 
are corroborated by others then they help to form a body 
of record which may well be worth investigation, analysis 
and explanation. If they are not so corroborated, then they 
naturally and properly fall away as mere vagaries of self- 
deception. I have not the least doubt that anything which 
is really genuine will be corroborated. 



A NOTE xxiii 

It seems to me more and more clear that the word "I" 
has a practically infinite range of meaning — that the ego 
covers far more ground than we usually suppose. At some 
points we are intensely individual, at others intensely sym- 
pathetic; some of our impressions (as the tickling of a hair) 
are of the most local and momentary character, others (as 
the sense of identity) involve long periods of time. Some- 
times we are aware of almost a fusion between our own 
identity and that of another person. What does all this 
mean? Are we really separate individuals, or is individual- 
ity an illusion, or again is it only a part of the ego or soul 
that is individual, and not the whole? Is the ego absolutely 
one with the body, or is it only a small part of the body, or 
again is the body but a part of the self — one of its organs 
so to speak, and not the whole man? Or lastly is it per- 
haps not possible to express the truth by any direct use of 
these or other terms of ordinary language? Anyhow, what 
am I? 

These are questions which come all down Time, demand- 
ing solution — which humanity is constantly endeavoring to 
find an answer to. I do not pretend to answer them. On 
the contrary I am sure that not one of the pieces in "To- 
wards Democracy" has been written with the deliberate view 
of providing an answer. They have simply been written to 
express feelings which insisted on being expressed. Never- 
theless it is possible that some of them — by giving the ex- 
periences and affirmations even of one person — may con- 
tribute material towards that answer to these and the like 
questions which in some region must assuredly be given. 

That there is a region of consciousness removed beyond 
what we usually call mortality, into which we humans can 



xxiv TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

yet pass, I practically do not doubt; but granting that this 
is a fact, its explanation still remains for investigation. 

I have said in this brief note on "Towards Democracy" 
nothing about the influence of Whitman — for the same rea- 
son that I have said nothing about the influence of the sun 
or the winds. These influences lie too far back and ramify 
too complexly to be traced. I met with William Rossetti's 
little selection from "Leaves of Grass" in 1868 or 1869, 
and read that and the original editions continuously for ten 
years. I never met with any other book (with the excep- 
tion perhaps of Beethoven's sonatas) which I could read and 
re-read as I could this one. I find it difficult to imagine 
what my life would have been without it. "Leaves of Grass" 
"filtered and fibred" my blood: but I do not think I ever 
tried to imitate it or its style. Against the inevitable drift 
out of the more classic forms of verse into a looser and freer 
rhythm I fairly fought, contesting the ground ("kicking 
against the pricks") inch by inch during a period of seven 
years in numerous abortive and mongrel creations — till in 
1 88 1 I was finally compelled into the form (if such it can 
be called) of "Towards Democracy." I did not adopt it 
because it was an approximation to the form of "Leaves of 
Grass." Wliatever resemblance there may be between the 
rhythm, style, thoughts, constructions, etc., of the two books, 
must I think be set down to a deeper similarity of emotional 
atmosphere and intension in the two authors — even though 
that similarity may have sprung and no doubt largely did 
spring out of the personal influence of one upon the other. 
Anyhow our temperaments, standpoints, antecedents, etc., are 
so entirely diverse and opposite that, except for a few points, 
I can hardly imagine that there is much real resemblance to 
be traced. Whitman's full-blooded, copious, rank, masculine 



A NOTE XXV 

style must always make him One of the world's great originals 
— a perennial fountain of health and strength, moral as well 
as physical. He has the amplitude of the Earth itself, and 
can no more be thought away than a mountain can. He 
often indeed reminds one of a great quarry on a mountain 
side — the great shafts of sunlight and the shadows, the 
primitive face of the rock itself, the power and the daring 
of the men at work upon it, the tumbled blocks and masses, 
materials for endless buildings, and the beautiful tufts 
of weed or flower on inaccessible ledges — a picture most 
artistic in its very incoherence and formlessness. 

"Towards Democracy" has a milder radiance, as of the 
moon compared with the sun — allowing you to glimpse the 
stars behind. Tender and meditative, less resolute and 
altogether less massive, it has the quality of the fluid and 
yielding air rather than of the solid and uncompromising 
earth. 



Part I 
TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The sun, the moon and the stars, the grass, the water 
that flows round the earth, and the light air of heaven: 

To You greeting. I too stand behind these and send you 
word across them. 



FREEDOM at last! 
Long sought, long prayed for — ages and ages long: 
The burden to which I continually return, seated here 
thick-booted and obvious yet dead and buried and passed 
into heaven, unsearchable ; 

[Hovv^ know you indeed but what I have passed into 
you?] 

And Joy, beginning but without ending — the journey of 
journeys — Thought laid quietly aside: 

These things I, writing, translate for you — I wipe a 
mirror and place it in your hands. 



II 



The sun shines, as of old; the stars look down from 
heaven; the moon, crescent, sails in the twilight; on bushy 
tops in the warm nights, naked, with mad dance and song, 
the earth-children address themselves to love; 



4 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Civilisation sinks and swims, but the old facts remain 
— the sun smiles, knowing well its strength. 

The little red stars appear once more on the hazel 
boughs, shining among the catkins; over waste lands the 
pewit tumbles and cries as at the first day; men with horses 
go out on the land — they shout and chide and strive — and 
return again glad at evening; the old earth breathes deep 
and rhythmically, night and day, summer and winter, 
giving and concealing herself. 

I arise out of the dewy night and shake my wings. 

Tears and lamentations are no more. Life and death 
lie stretched below me. I breathe the sweet aether blowing 
of the breath of God. 

Deep as the universe is my lif^ — and I know it; nothing 
can dislodge the knowledge of it ; nothing can destroy, 
nothing can harm me. 

Joy, joy arises — I arise. The sun darts overpowering 
piercing rays of joy through me, the night radiates it from 
me. 

I take wings through the night and pass through all the 
wildernesses of the worlds, and the old dark holds of tears 
and death — and return with laughter, laughter, laughter; 

Sailing through the starlit spaces on outspread wings, 
we two — O laughter! laughter! laughter! 



Ill 



Freedom! the deep breath! the word heard centuries and 
centuries beforehand; the soul singing low and passionate 
to itself: Joy! Joy! 

Not as In a dream. The earth remains and daily life 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 5 

remains, and the scrubbing of doorsteps, and the house and 
the care of the house remains ; but Joy fills it, fills the house 
full and swells to the sky and reaches the stars: all Joy! 

freed soul! soul that has completed its relation to 
the body! O soaring, happy beyond words, into other 
realms passing, salutations to you, freed, redeemed soul! 

What is certain, and not this? What is solid? — the 
rocks? the mountains? destiny? 

The gates are thrown wide open all through the universe. 
I go to and fro — through the heights and depths I go and 
I return: All is well. 

1 conceive the purport of all suffering. The blear-eyed 
boy, famished in brain, famished in body, shivering there in 
his rags by the angle of the house, is become divine before 
me; I hold him long and silently by the hand and pray to 
him. 

I conceive a millennium on earth — a millennium not of 
riches, nor of mechanical facilities, nor of intellectual 
facilities, nor absolutely of immunity from disease, nor abso- 
lutely of immunity from pain ; but a time when men and 
women all over the earth shall ascend and enter into relation 
with their bodies — shall attain freedom and joy; 

And the men and women of that time looking back 
with something like envy to the life of to-day, that they too 
might have borne a part in its travail and throes of birth. 

All is well: to-day and a million years hence, equally. 
To you the whole universe is given for a garden of delight 
and to the soul that loves, in the great coherent Whole, the 
hardest and most despised lot is even with the best ; and 
there is nothing more certain or more solid than this. 



6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

IV 

Freedom! the deep breath! 

The old Earth breathes deep and rhythmically, night 
and day, summer and winter; the cuckoo calls across the 
woodland, and the willow-wren warbles among the great 
chestnut buds; the laborer eases himself under a hedge, and 
the frog flops into the pond as the cows approach; 

In the theatre Juliet from her balcony still bends in 
the moonlight, and Romeo leans up from the bushes below; 
in the pale dawn, still, faint with love he tears himself away ; 
the great outlines of the fields and hills where you were 
born and grew up remain apparently unchanged. 

If I am not level with the lowest I am nothing; and if I 
did not know for a certainty that the craziest sot in the 
village is my equal, and were not proud to have him walk 
with me as my friend, I would not write another word — for 
in this is my strength. 

My thoughts are nothing, but I myself will reach my 
arms through time, constraining you. 

These are the days which nourished and fed me so kindly 
and well ; this is the place where I was born, the walls and 
roofs which are familiar to me, the windows out of which 
I have looked. This is the overshadowing love and care 
of parents; these are the faces and deeds, indelible, of 
brothers and sisters — closing round me like a wall — the early 
world in which I lay so long. 

This is to-day: the little ship lies ready, the fresh air 
blowing, the sunlight pouring over the world. These are 
the gates of all cities and habitations standing open; this 
is the love of men and women accompanying me wherever 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 7 

I go; these are the sacred memories of that early world, 
time may never change. 

And this is the word which swells the bosom of the 
hills and feeds the sacred laughter of the streams, for man: 
the purpose which endures for you in those old fields and 
hills and the sphinx-glance of the stars. 



I, Nature, stand, and call to you though you heed not: 
Have courage, come forth, O child of mine, that you may 
see me. 

As a nymph of the invisible air before her mortal be- 
loved, so I glance before you — I dart and stand in your path 
— and turn away from your heedless eyes like one in pain. 

I am the ground ; I listen the sound of your feet. They 
come nearer. I shut my eyes and feel their tread over my 
face. 

I am the trees; I reach downward my long arms and 
touch you, though you heed not, with enamored fingers; 
my leaves and zigzag branches write wonderful words 
against the evening sky — for you, for you — say, can you not 
even spell them? 

O shame! shame! I fling you away from me (you shall 
not know that I love you ) . Unworthy ! I strike you across 
the face; does the blood mount to your cheek now? my 
glove rings at your feet: I dare you to personal combat. 

Will you come forth? will you do the daring deed? will 
you strip yourself naked as you came into the world, and 
come before me, and regard unafraid the flashing of my 
sword? will you lose your life, to Me? 



8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

child of mine! 

See! you are in prison, and I can give you space; 

You are choked down below there, by the dust of your 
own raising, and I can give you the pure intoxicating air of 
the mountains to breathe; 

1 can make you a king, and show you all the lands of 
the earth; 

And from yourself to yourself I can deliver you, and 
can come, your enemy, and gaze long and long with yells of 
laughter into your eyes! 



VI 



The caddis worm leaves the water, and takes on wings 
and flies in the upper air ; the walking mud becomes amorous 
of the winged sunlight, and behaves itself in an abandoned 
manner. 

The Earth (during its infancy) flies round the Sun 
from which it sprang, and the mud flies round the pond 
from which it sprang. 

The earth swims in space, the fish swim in the sea, the 
bird swims in the air, and the soul of man in the ocean 
of Equality — towards which all the other streams run. 

Here, into this ocean, everything debouches; all interest 
in life begins anew. The plantain in the croft looks differ- 
ent from what it did before. 

Do you understand? To realise Freedom or Equality 
(for it comes to the same thing) — for this hitherto, for you, 
the universe has rolled; for this, your life, possibly yet 
many lives; for this, death, many deaths; for this, desires, 
fears, complications, bewilderments, sufferings, hope, regret 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 9 

— all falling away at last duly before the Soul, before You 
(O laughter!) arising the full grown lover — possessor of 
the password. 

The path of Indifference — action, inaction, good, evil, 
pleasure, pain, the sky, the sea, cities and wilds — all equally 
used (never shunned), adopted, put aside, as materials only; 
you continuing, love continuing — the use and freedom of 
materials dawning at last upon you. 

O laughter! the Soul invading, looking proudly upon its 
new kingdom, possessing the offerings of all pleasures, for- 
bidden and unforbidden, from all created things — if per- 
chance it will stoop to accept them; the everlasting life. 

From that day forward objects turn round upon them- 
selves with an exceedingly innocent air, but are visibly not 
the same; 

Fate is leveled, and the mountains and pyramids look 
foolish before the glance of a little child ; love becomes 
possessed of itself, and of the certainty of its own fruition 
(which it never could have before). 

Here the essence of all expression, and the final sur- 
render of Art — for this the divine Artists have struggled 
and still struggle; 

For this the heroes and lovers of all ages have laid down 
their lives; and nations like tigers have fought, knowing 
well that this life was a mere empty blob without Freedom. 

Where this makes itself known in a people or even in 
the soul of a single man or woman, there Democracy begins 
to exist. 

Of that which exists in the Soul, political freedom and 
institutions of equality, and so forth, are but the shadows 



lo TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

(necessarily thrown) ; and Democracy in States or Constitu- 
tions but the shadow of that which first expresses itself in 
the glance of the eye or the appearance of the skin. 

Without that first the others are of no account, and 
need not be further mentioned. 



VII 



Inevitable in time for man and all creation is the realisa- 
tion : the husks one behind another keep shelling and peeling 
off. 

Rama crosses to Ceylon by the giant stepping-stones; and 
the Ganges floats with the flowers and sacred lamps of 
pilgrims; Diotima teaches Socrates divine lore; Benedict 
plunges his midnight lust in nettles and briars; and Bruno 
stands prevaricating yet obstinate before his judges. 

The midnight jackals scream round the village; and 
the feigned cry of the doe is heard as she crosses the track 
of the hunter pursuing her young; the chaffinch sits close in 
her perfect nest, and the shining leaping waters of the 
streams run on and on.' 

The great stream of history runs on. 

Over the curve of the misty horizon, out of the dim 
past (do you not see it?) over the plains of China and the 
burning plains of India, by the tombs of Egypt and through 
the gardens beneath the white tower of Belus and under the 
shadow of the rock of Athens, the great stream descends: 

Soft slow broad-bosomed mother-stream — where the Ark 
floats, and Isis in her moon-shaped boat sails on with the 
corpse of Osiris, and the child-god out of the water rises 
seated on a lotus flower, and Brahma two-sexed dwells amid 
the groves, and the maidens weep for Adonis.' 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY u 

Mighty long-delaying vagrant stream! Of innumerable 
growing rustling life! Out of some cavern mouth long ago 
where the cave-dwellers sat gnawing burnt bones, down to 
to-day — ^with ever growing tumult, and glints of light upon 
thee in the distance as of half-open eyes, and the sound of 
countless voices out of thee, nearer, nearer, past promontory 
after promontory winding, widening, hastening! 

Now to-day, turbid wild and unaccountable in sudden 
Niagara-plunge toward thy nearer oceanic levels descend- 
ing — 

How wonderful art thou! 

VIII 

Lo! to-day the falling waters — the ribbed white perpen- 
dicular seas — shaking the ground with their eternal thunder! 
Lo! above all rising like a sign Into the immense height of 
the sky, the columned vapor and calm exhalation of their 
agony — 

The Arisen and mighty soul of Man! 

[The word runs like fire along the ground ; who shall 
contain it? the word that is nothing — as fire is nothing and 
yet it devours the land in a moment.] 

Lo! to-day the eagle soul that stretches Its neck into the 
height, looking before and after; the living banner calling 
with audible inaudible voice through all times; the spirit 
whose eyes are heavy with gazing out over the immense 
world of MAN! 

[O spirit! spirit! spirit! spirit! stretching thy arms out 
over the world. 

Calling to thy children — ^spirit of the brow of love and 
feet of war and thunder — 



12 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Thou art let loose within me! 

No delicate fiction art thou to me now — the sound of 
thy steps appalls me with joy as thou stridest — fills me with 
joy and power. 

Go, go, my soul, stream out on the wind with this one 
— I laugh as the ancient cities shake like leaves in the din 
and tumult; 

Go shout on the winds that the world is alive, that the 
Arisen one controls it — 

I laugh as the ground rocks under my feet, I laugh as 
I walk through the forest, and the trees reel to and fro, 
and their great dead branches chatter 

Shout on the winds, though the foaming hell grows 
hoarse with gusty thunder, shout that the crashing distracted 
hurrying eddying world is taken 

Prisoner in the highest!] 

Ah! the live Earth trembles beneath thy footsteps, the 
passionate deep shuddering words run along the ground: 
who shall contain, who shall understand them? 

Surely, surely, age after age out of the ground itself aris- 
ing, from the chinks of the lips of the clods and from 
between the blades of grass, up with the tall-growing wheat 
surely ascending 

Deep-muttered, vast, inaudible — they come — the strange 
new words, through the frame of the great Mother and 
through the frames of her children trembling: 

Freedom ! 

And among the far nations there is a stir like the stir of 
the leaves of a forest. 

Joy, Joy arising on Earth! 

^nd lo! the banners lifted from point to point, and the 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 13 

spirits of the ancient races looking abroad — the divinely 
beautiful daughters of God calling to their children. 

The nations of the old and of the new worlds! 

See, what hastening of feet, what throngs, what rustling 
movement ! 

Lo! the divine East from ages and ages back intact 
her priceless jewel of thought — the germ of Democracy — 
bringing down ! [Gentle and venerable India well pleased 
now at last to hear fulfilled the words of her ancient sages.] 

Lo, Arabia! peerless in dignity, eternal in manhood of 
love and war — pivoting like a centre the races of mankind ; 
Siberia, the aged mother, breaking forth uncontrollable into 
exultant shouting, from Kokan to farthest Kamschatka and 
the moss-morasses of the Arctic Sea! 

See how they arise and call to each other! Norway with 
wild hair streaming, dancing frantic on her mountain tops! 
Italy from dreams, from languid passionate memories amid 
her marble ruins, to deeds again arising; Greece; Belgium; 
Denmark; Ireland — liberty's deathless flame leaping on her 
Atlantic Shore! 

O the wild races of Africa, beautiful children of the 
sun, hardy and superb, givers of gifts to the common stock 
without which all the other gifts were useless! The native 
tribes still roaming in the freedom of the earth and the 
waters: the Greenlander and his little boy together in their 
canoe towing the dead seal, the tawny bronzed Malay, and 
Papuan, and Australian through the interminable silent 
bush tracking infallibly for water or the kangaroo! 

Lo! the great users and accumulators of materials, the 
proud and melancholy Titans struggling with civilisation! 
England, ringed with iron and with the glitter of her waves 



14 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

upon her; Germany; France; Russia — and the flow of East 
and West, and the throes of womanhood and the future; 
lo! Spain — dark, proud, voiceless, biting her lips, with high 
white arm beckoning beckoning! And you, too, ye mani- 
fold Stars and Stripes — unto what great destiny! 

The peoples of the Earth ; the intertwining many-colored 
streams ! 

China, gliding seemingly unobservant among the crowd, 
self -restrained, of her own soul calmly possessed ; the resplen- 
dent-limbed Negro and half-caste (do you not see that old 
woman there with brow and nose and jaw dating conclu- 
sively back from far away Egypt?) ; the glitter-eyed caress- 
ing-handed Hindu, suave thoughtful Persian, and faithful 
Turk; Mexico and the Red Indian (O unconscious pleading 
eyes of the dying races!) ; Japan and the Isles of the Pacific, 
and the caravan wanderers and dwellers in the oases of 
Sahara. 

O glancing eyes! O leaping shining waters! Do I not 
know that thou Democracy dost control and inspire, that 
thou, too, hast relations to these — and a certainty — 

As surely as Niagara has relations to Erie and Ontario? 



IX 



Lo! the spirit floats in the air. 

On his lips it kisses the young man from China, and the 
patient old man, and the spiritual-faced boy; 

And on his lips the long-eyed Japanese; and on his thick 
lips the Negro: 

Come ! 

And to the forlorn emigrant, to the old Irish woman with 
shriveled brown anxious face, and to her barefoot beautiful 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 15 

daughter, and to the young fair-haired woman from Sweden : 

Come! 

And to the Portuguese lad with shining teeth and smiling 
mouth, and to the long-haired Italian, and to the ruddy 
Scot ; 

And to the young Tamil boy holding up flowers and 
pouring his morning libation of water to the Sun, and to 
his grandmother superintending the household with quiet 
loving care; and to the rows of Hindu villagers squatted by 
the water tanks at early morning, bathing and chatting, and 
to the women their wives cleaning their brass-glancing 
waterpots; and to the noble Mahratta women, and to the 
beautiful almond-eyed women of Egypt, and to the shifty 
clever Eurasian, and to the stunted dweller by the sacred 
unfrozen lake of Thibet: 

Come! — and to the wanderers ''lighting their camp-fires 
at the feet of the world-old statues at Thebes ; and to the 
sacred exiles on the march to Irkutsk; to the wild riders 
across the plains of Wallachia; 

And to the sweet healthy-bodied English girl, and to 
the drink-marked prostitute, and to the convicted criminals, 
the diseased decrepit and destitute of all the Earth: 

Lo! my children I give myself to you; I stretch my 
arms; on the lips each one in the name of all I kiss you: 

Come! And out of your clinging kisses, see! I create 
a new world. 



X 



Who understands? 

Who draws close as a little child? 

Ah! who is he who stands closest? And has heard 



i6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the word, himself uttered out of the ground from between 
the clods? 

Who is the wise statesman who walks hand in hand with 
his people, guiding and guided? 

Who is the child of the people, moving joyous, liquid, 
free, among his equals, touching nearest the serene un- 
tampered facts of earth and sky? 

Who is the poet whom love has made strong strong 
strong with all strength? 

Ah! who is he who says to the great good Mother: 
Cling fast, O Mother, and hold me; clasp thy fingers over 
my face and draw me to thee for ever? 



XI 



THE scene changes; the sun and the stars are veiled, 
the solid earth alone is left. I am buried (I too 
that I may rise again) deep underfoot among the clods. 

Each one a transparent miracle, competent with man 
and his vast-aspiring religions and civilisations — but for me 
they are only dirt. 

Level wastes of sand and scrub ; mudflats by the mouths 
of rivers; old disheveled rocks and oozy snow; trickling 
slime-places and ponds and bogs and mangrove marshes 
and chattering shale-slopes and howling deserted ridges and 
heaps of broken glass and old bones and shoes and pots 
and pans in blind alleys and fogs along flat shores and crimes 
betrayals murders thefts respectability, bad smells by house 
doors, filthy-smelling interiors of factories and drawing- 
rooms, stale scents, gas, dirt, evil faces, drunkenness, cruelty 
to animals, and the cruelty of animals to each other 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 17 

This is the solid earth in the midst of which I am buried. 

I am mad ! the lightning flashes on evil raw places. 
I stretch uneasily in my grave and tumble the towers of 
great cities with my feet; the volcanos lurch and spill their 
molten liquor. 

1 hate those nearest me, and am closed, captious and in- 
tolerant. I sweep a great space round me and sulk in the 
middle of it. 

Now underneath the earth on which you walk I sport 
in the fire of Hell; 

Satan is my friend and vicious blood-spilling lusts and 
clenched teeth push the way for me to destruction. I dance 
in the flames and will claw every one in: take care how 
you cross me! 

Your talk of goodness I despise. To every conceivable 
sin I hold out my hand. My touch blackens you. I crawl 
forth out of slime and worms and blink at the sun. I press 
my way madly through the gallows-crowd to him who 
bears my reprieve held up on high. 

This is the Cross; these are the eyes of Christ — and 
of the crossing-sweeper; 

This is the Divine love which encloses and redeems all 
evil. Ah! here is peace! 

Flat curtains hang round me in every direction (as they 
hang round you), and behind them the live people go danc- 
ing and laughing: but we are not going to be baffled. 

Sex still goes first, and hands eyes mouth brain follow; 
from the midst of belly and thighs radiate the knowledge 
of self, religion, and immortality. 



i8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

XII 

The clods press suffocating closer and closer — grit and 
filth accumulate in the eyes and mouth, I can neither see 
nor speak — the devil and the worms dance around. 

The immortal worms make their obeisance to you, and 
the religious devil grins at you — they compliment you on 
your superiority. 

The Earth is for you, and all that is therein — save what 
anyone else can grab; and universal love is for you — and 
to sleek yourself smoother than others in the glass; and 
to fly on from world to world, leaving sweet odors behind 
you, and to get cleverer and cleverer and better and better 
as you go, and to be generally superior! 

How very nice! the devil and the worms thank you 
for your kind invitation to accompany them; but regret 
that they are engaged. 



XIII 



This is poison ! do not touch it — the black brew of the 
cauldron out of which Democracy firks its horned and 
shameless head. 

disrespectable Democracy! I love you. No white 
angelic spirit are you now, but a black and horned Ethio- 
pian — ^your great grinning lips and teeth and powerful brow 
and huge limbs please me well. 

Where you go about the garden there are great foot- 
marks and an uncanny smell ; the borders are trampled 
and I see where you have lain and rolled in a great bed 
of lilies, bruising the sweetness from them. 

1 follow you far afield and into the untrodden woods, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 19 

and there remote from man you disclose yourself to me, 
goat-footed and sitting on a rock — as to the Athenian runner 
of old. 

You fill me with visions, and when the night comes 
I see the forests upon your flanks and your horns among, 
the stars. I climb upon you and fulfil my desire. 

XIV 

The heights heighten and the depths deepen ; from be- 
neath the eyelids of man look forth new heavens and a new 
earth. The glitter of sunlight upon the waves is there. 

Here underneath, the great lubricous roots grasp down- 
ward in darkness at the rocks; there the tall shaft shoots 
into air, and the leaves float poised in the sunshine — but the 
word conceals itself. 

Of the goat-legged God peering over the tops of the 
clouds; of the wild creature running in the woods of whom 
the rabbits are not afraid ; of him who peeps his horns in 
at the windows of the churches, and the congregation cross 
themselves and the parson saws his loudest ; of the shame- 
less lusty unpresentable pal ; of the despised one hobbling 
on hoofs — I dream. 

Of the despised and rejected, arising with healing in his 
wings, of the sane sweet companion in the morning, of the 
Lover who neither adorns nor disguises himself — I dream. 

XV 

O Democracy, I shout for you! 

Back! Make me a space round me, you kid-gloved 



20 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

rotten-breathed paralytic world, with miserable antics mim- 
icking the appearance of life. 

England! for good or evil It is useless to attempt to 
conceal yourself — I know you too well. 

I am the very devil. I will tear your veils off, your 
false shows and pride I will trail in the dust, — you shall be 
utterly naked before me, in your beauty and in your shame. 

For who better than I should know your rottenness, 
your self-deceit, your delusion, your hideous grinning corpse- 
chattering death-in-life business at top? (and who better 
than I the wonderful hidden sources of your strength be- 
neath?) 

Deceive yourself no longer. 

Do you think your smooth-faced Respectability will save 
you? or that Cowardice carries a master-key of the universe 
in its pocket — scrambling miserably out of the ditch on the 
heads of those beneath it? 

Do you think that it Is a fine thing to grind cheap 
goods out of the hard labor of ill-paid boys? and do you 
imagine that all your Commerce Shows and Manufactures 
are anything at all compared with the bodies and souls of 
these? 

Do you suppose I have not heard your talk about Morality 
and Religion and set it face to face in my soul to the in- 
stinct of one clean naked unashamed Man? or that I have 
not seen your coteries of elegant and learned people put 
to rout by the innocent speech of a child, and the appari- 
tion of a mother suckling her own babe! 

Do you think that there ever was or could be Infidelity 
greater than this? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 21 

Do you grab interest on Money and lose all interest 
in Life? Do you found a huge system of national Credit 
on absolute personal Distrust? Do you batten like a ghoul 
on the dead corpses of animals, and then expect to be of 
a cheerful disposition? Do you put the loving beasts to 
torture as a means of promoting your own health and hap- 
piness? Do you, O foolishest one, fancy to bind men 
together by Laws (of all ideas the most laughable), and set 
whole tribes of unbelievers at work year after year patching 
that rotten net? Do you live continually farther and farther 
from Nature, till you actually doubt if there be any natural 
life, or any avenging instinct in the dumb elements? — And 
then do you wonder that your own Life is slowly ebbing 
— that you have lost all gladness and faith? 

I do not a bit. I am disgusted with you, and will not 
cease till I have absolutely floored you. I do not care; you 
may struggle; but I am the stronger. 

Ah, England! Have I not seen, do I not see now, 
plain as day, through thy midst the genius of thy true life 
wandering — he who can indeed, who can alone, save thee — • 

Seeking thy soul, thy real life, out of so much rubbish 
to disentangle? 

Plaintive the Divine Child haply a moment by some 
cottage door, or by the side of some mechanic at his bench, 
lingering, passes on; 

Through the great magnificent land, through its parks 
and country palaces and bewildering splendors of the re- 
sorts of wealth and learning, shy and plaintive, passes: 

Is there no hand held out? 

Do not the learned people know him? Have the wealthy 



22 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

nothing to give? Will not the philanthropic reach a hand 
to this one? 

The guides are all talking. They are settling the affairs 
of the universe. [They never ceaee.] 

They have not settled yet w^hich w^ay to go themselves: 
how shall they give help to an ignorant child? 

They are busy moreover distributing money and pamph- 
lets: and surely nothing more can be needed. 

They are very busy. They are vrorn out and rest not. 
Their faces are without sleep. 

Nevertheless they go on. Was it said that any man could 
be contented? It is a lie; — or happy? It is mere foolish- 
ness. These things are the dreams of youthful ignorance. 

The affairs of the universe and the continual fluctuations 
of the Stock Exchange are too great an anxiety. 

Meanwhile the old woman was staggering homeward 
under a load of sticks — but none offered to relieve her of 
her burden. But indeed when you think of it, how could 
they? for it would have spoiled their clothes. 

The poor boy was taken with a fit upon the doorstep, 
but it was best not to take him all dirty and slavering into 
the nicely-carpeted house! 

The criminal had suffered shipwreck in life and was 
deserted ; but of course it would not have done to be seen 
consorting with him. 

O happy happy guides! to whom such mighty issues are 
confided! ' 

Happy happy Child! who need not stay to hear the end 
of their talk ! whom I saw, in vision, silent and musing within 
itself, pass away from among those people. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 23 

XVI 

Will you continually deny yourself, you? Will you for 
ever turn aside? These are not the times, remember, of 
canary birds — when the thunder growls along the horizon. 

O England, do I not know thee — as in a nightmare 
strangled tied and bound? 

Thy poverty — when through thy filthy courts from tangles 
of matted hair gaunt women with venomous faces look 
upon me? 

When I see the thin joyless faces of their children, and 
the brick walls scarcely recognisable as brick for dirt, and 
the broken windows; when I breathe the thick polluted 
air in which not even plants will live; when oaths and 
curses are yelled in my ears, and the gibbering face of 
drink starts upon me at every corner; 

When I turn from this and consider throughout the 
length and breadth of the land, not less but more hateful, 
the insane greed of riches — of which poverty and its evils 
are but the necessary obverse and counterpart; 

When I see deadly Respectability sitting at Its dinner 
table, quaffing its wine, and discussing the rise and fall of 
stocks; when I see the struggle, the fear, the envy, the 
profound infidelity (so profound that it is almost uncon- 
scious of itself) in which the moneyed classes live: 

When the faces of their children come to me pleading, 
pleading — every bit as much as the children of the city poor 
— pleading for one touch of nature: Of children who have 
been stuffed with lies all their lives, who have been told 
that they cannot do without this and that and a thousand 
things — all of which are wholly unnecessary, and a nuisance, 
(as who should tell one that it were not safe to walk on 



24 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the naked Earth, but only on ground embarrassed with 
straw and all manner of rubbish up to one's knees;) 

Of children who have been taught to mix the nonsense 
manners and diarrhoea of drawing-rooms with their ideals of 
right and wrong; to despise manual labor and to reverence 
ridicule; to eat and drink and dress and sleep in unbelief 
and against all their natural instincts; and in all things to 
mingle the disgust of repletion with the very thought of 
pleasure — till their young judgments are confused and their 
instincts actually cease to be a guide to them ; 

Of strong healthy boys who positively believe they will 
starve unless they enter the hated professions held out to 
them ; 

When I see avenues of young girls and women, with 
sideway flopping heads, debarred from Work, debarred from 
natural Sexuality, weary to death with nothing to do, (and 
this thy triumph, O deadly respectability discussing stocks!) 

When I see, flickering around, miserable spectrums and 
nostrums of reform — mere wisps devoid of all body — 
philanthropic chatterboxes, [Nay, I do not hold with you! 
For if you kill me to death talking to me in a drawing- 
room, what in the name of heaven are you going to do to 
the unfortunate in hospital?] 

When I hear and see the droning and see-sawing of pul- 
pits; when the vision of perfect vulgarity and common- 
placeness arises upon me — of society — and of that which 
arrogates to itself the sacred name of England ; 

The puppet dance of gentility — condescension, white 
hands, unsoiled dress, charitable proprietorship — in the 
street, the barracks, the church, the shop, the house, the 
school, the assembly, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 25 

In eating drinking and saying Good morning and Good 
night — of the theory of what it is to be a lady or a gentle- 
man; 

Of exclusiveness, and of being in the swim ; of the drivel 
of aristocratic connections; of drawing-rooms and levees 
and the theory of animated clothespegs generally; of be- 
longing to clubs and of giving pence to crossing-sweepers 
without apparently seeing them ; of helplessly living in 
houses with people who feed you, dress you, clean you, and 
despise you; of driving in carriages; of being intellectual; of 
prancing about and talking glibly on all subjects on the 
theory of setting things right — and leaving others to do 
the dirty work of the world ; of having read books by the 
score, and being yet unable to read a single page ; of 
writing, and yet ignorant how to sign your name; of talk- 
ing about political economy and politics and never having 
done a single day's labor in your life; of being a magistrate 
or a judge and never having committed a common crime, 
or been in the position to commit one; of being a parson 
and afraid to be seen toping with Christ in a public; a 
barrister and to travel in a third class carriage; an officer 
and to walk with one of your own men ; 

When I see the sea, spreading, of infidelity, of belief in 
externals — in money, big guns, laws, views, accomplishments, 
cheap goods — towncouncilors, cabinet ministers, M.P.'s, 
generals, judges, bishops — all alike; 

When I look for help from the guides and see only a 
dead waste of aimless abject closeshaven shabby simpering 
flat pompous peaked punctilious faces: 

O England, whither — strangled tied and bound — whither 
whither art thou come? 



26 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

XVII 

I choke! 

[Or should choke — did I not know very well I could 
tear all these bonds to pieces like withes of dry grass: did 
I not know too that these are after all in place as they are 
nor could be better than they are: 

The natural sheath protecting the young bud — fitting 
close, stranglingly close, till the young thing gains a little 
more power, and then falling dry, useless, their work fin- 
ished, to the ground.] 

Strangled, O God? Nay — the circle of gibbering faces 
draws closer, the droning noises become louder, the weight 
gets heavier, unbearable — One instant struggle ! and lo ! 

It is Over! — daylight! the sweet rain is falling and I 
hear the songs of the birds. 

Blessings and thanks for ever for the sweet rain ; bles- 
sings for the fresh fresh air blowing, and the meadows 
illimitable and the grass and the clouds; 

Blessings and thanks for you, you wild waters eternally 
flowing: O come flowing, encroaching, over me, in my 
ears: I salute you who are pure and sweet (ah! what de- 
signs, what love, are hid within you!) — 

I praise you for your faithfulness for ever. 

XVIII 

To descend, first; 

To feel downwards and downwards through this 
wretched maze of shams for the solid ground — to come close 
to the Earth itself and those that live In direct contact 
with it; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 27 

To identify, to saturate yourself with these, their laws 
of being, their modes of life, their needs (the Earth's also), 
thoughts, temptations and aspirations; 

This — is it not the eternal precept? — is the first thing: 
to dig downwards. Afterwards the young shoot will ascend 
— and ascending easily part aside the overlying rubbish. 

These are not the times of canary birds — nor of trifling 
with art and philosophy and impertinent philanthropic 
schemes; this is the time of grown Men and Women: 

Of or among the people ; always living close to the 
earth and the people, and creating what they create, out 
of them. 

Young Men and Women, I — though not of myself 
alone — call you: the time is come. (Is not the sweet rain 
falling?) 

You — for whom the bitter cup and the sweet are so 
strangely mixed — how strangely none but you can tell ; 

You — in whom divine strength is one with the uttermost 
weakness ; 

In soberness of spirit, as to some long and patient task 
in death alone ending, I call. 

Strong in peace, strong in turmoil and conflict, strong 
in yourselves, undaunted, with large hearts, with large 
strong hands. 

Spreaders of health (better than any doctor) to indi- 
viduals, to the diseased prostrate nation, sustainers of ridi- 
cule, clearers of the ground laden with the accumulated 
wreck and rubbish of centuries. 

Lovers of all handicrafts and of labor in the open air, 
confessed passionate lovers of your own sex, 



28 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Arise ! 

Heroes of the enfranchisement of the body (latest and 
best gift long concealed from men), Arise! 

As the North wind in summer runs over the world, 
making a clear light down to the very horizon — so is the 
world prepared for you. 

Come! I too call you. I too have looked in your eyes, 
O you of great faith and few words; you cannot escape, 
now. 

Under your eyelids I have seen, shy, hidden away, pure 
without taint, one with the fresh air to sweeten all the world 
— lo! the greatest faith of all. 

You sacred ones, first interpreters, you holders up of 
new ideals, you greatest and least. 

You who are and by your mere presence create Demo- 
cracy — Arise ! 

Thou Woman, gentleborn and sensitive, yet incapable 
of being shocked or disgusted — Arise! 

Thou one strong Man in love sufficient, out of the heart 
of the people — Arise! 



XIX 



HEROES, lovers, judges ; despised, outcast, ridiculed ; 
princes and kings and destitute; drudges and slaves; 
mothers, free women and feminine neuters ; actors, parsons, 
squires, capitalists, rich dinners, fine houses (it is all the 
same: I go back upon my own words), the parks and the 
opera ; unobtrusive, unguessed, day by day, and year by 
year; talking loud, talking soft, in the fashion, and out; 
dreaming of duty, love, release, nature, organisation, hatred, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 29 

death ; ascetic, lusty, genial, maimed, incoherent, proud ; by 
tradition military, money-broking, official, commercial, idle, 
literary, church, chapel and club ; in all forms and in all 
places ; weary yet unwearied ; before dawn rising and 
through the window peering at the untroubled sky; weak 
yet indomitable; suffering yet filled with exceeding joy — 

Age after age, under the Earth, hidden, the womb of 
the dead generations arising to life again, myriads of seeds, 
chrysalids, pupae, cysts, rootlets, transparent white bulbs 
of souls in Hades, by faith working many miracles ; thrills 
of magnetism through the whole vast frame, summer heat 
and winter cold and the kiss of the living air ; death and 
decay and weakness and prostration and poisonous inbreaths, 
and nearer nearer nearer nearer life and joy everlasting. 

Through the city crowd pushing wrestling shouldering, 
against the tide, face after face, breath of liquor, money- 
grubbing eye, infidel skin, shouts, threats, greetings, smiles, 
eyes and breasts of love, breathless, clutches of lust, limbs, 
bodies, torrents, bursts, savage onslaughts, tears, entreaties, 
tremblings, stranglings, suicidal, the sky, the houses, surges 
and crests of waves, white faces from afar bearing down 
nearer nearer, almost touching, and glances unforgotten and 
meant to be unforgotten. 

XX 

I do not forget you: I see you quite plainly. 

Tangles of social claims, convenances, toy-duties, fine 
soft-carpeted house, array of servants, failing and failing 
health, growing and settled sadness, ennui, wearisome pleas- 
ures, hyper-6ensitiveness. 



30 TOWARDS DEM'OCRACY 

Golden hand-cuffs, the prison life of Custom without 
one touch of nature, desperate beating of wings and breast 
against the bars, trailing slime and winding web of lies 
impossible to escape from. 

Careful obediences; sleek hat and well-brushed coat; 
blameless deference to public opinion ; the desk, the counter, 
the Exchange, the walk home, the favorable comments of 
passers-by ; 

And within, blinding burning hatred, bottomless yawning 
pits opening in the midst of life — of love, of jealousy, of 
desire — vast gales and whirlwinds carrying away the super- 
structure and the plans of years. 

Waves and storms of the ocean within; shipwreck and 
disaster of life; fortune, health, honor, love, gone down 
seeming irretrievably in the great signless waste ; and still 
the stars shining calm on the flying spray, and the immense 
placid heaven unmoved going back to innumerable other 
worlds and radiant birth-places and pilgrimages and posses- 
sions of the Soul without end. 

XXI 

I do not forget you. I see you quite plainly. 
But why should one god leave his throne to scrape favors 
at the feet of other gods? 

Surely it is enough to be here — and always to be Here. 

I weave these words about myself to form a seamless 
web without beginning or ending. I do not spin a yarn for 
you to reel off at your leisure; nor do I pour out water 
into pots. 

This is one of my bodies — of the female — which if 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 31 

you penetrate with true sexual power, clinging it shall con- 
ceive, and you shall know me in part — by the answer of 
the eyes of children, yours and mine, looking up from the 
grass and down from the sky upon you as you walk. 

And if you understand me I will draw you away from 
all sorrow — so that no evil can happen to you. Not at 
first will it be so, but afterwards, after a time. 

XXII 

You cannot escape me (and this place of my Presence 
I will never leave till I have saturated myself, till the 
waves of my love have traveled over the whole vast ocean of 
existence from where I stand) : 

The horse galloping over the plains cannot escape the 
plains it gallops over. 

Leagues and leagues out in the sunlight I lie, the winds 
of heaven blow over me — I desire nothing more, I am 
perfectly content. 

Yes, you cannot escape me. 

At night I creep down and lie close in the great city 
— there I am at home — hours and hours I lie stretched 
there ; the feet go to and fro, to and fro, beside and over me. 

Oaths and curses and obscene jokes ; the group of 
laughing men and girls tumbling out of the doors of the 
beershop, the haggard old woman under the flaring gas-jet 
by the butcher's stall (the butcher sometimes gives her a 
bit of waste meat in charity), the butcher himself with his 
smooth grisled hair and florid face — you cannot escape me. 

You, soaring yearning face of youth threading the noisy 
crowd, though you soar to the stars you cannot escape me. 



32 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

I remain where I am. I make no effort. Wherever you 
go it is the same to me: I am there already. 

The murmuring of many voices is in my ears. As I lie 
on my side hour after hour the drowse of myriads of feet 
is upon me: 

Hour after hour, hour after hour, — and I sleep, well 
content. 

XXIII 

Closer and closer will I come, till I lay hold of you 
— myself and none other. 

As one grasps a drowning man with a grasp that will 
not be relaxed, so will I grasp you — ^you shall not escape me. 

Ah! Death, and Hell with thy gaping jaws, into thee 
at length I am curious to descend ; curious am I to go where 
the old empty masks of Fear and Disaster are kept, and 
to see where they hang — hereafter useless for ever. 

XXIV 

Are you laughed at, are you scorned? Do they gaze 
at you and giggle to each other as you pass by? Do they 
despise you because you are mis-shapen, because you are 
awkward, because you are peculiar, because you fail in 
everything you do — and you know it is true? 

Do you go to your chamber and hide yourself and think 
that no one thinks of you, or when they do only with 
contempt ? 

My child, there is One that not only thinks of you, 
but who cannot get on at all without you. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 33 

Are you alone In the world? 

Have you sinned ? have you a terrible secret w^Ithin you 
w^hich must out, yet you dare not reveal it? 

Have you a face so disfigured that no one will look 
straight in your eyes? 

Have you a mortal disease? do you feel the beating pulse 
of it in the dead of the night? At midday when the 
passers-by go to and fro in the bright sunshine, do you feel 
the shadowy call of it to another world? 

Are you tormented with inordinate clutching lusts which 
you dare not speak? are you nearly mad with the sting of 
them, and nearly mad with terror lest they should betray 
you? 

My child, there is One who understands perfectly. There 
is nothing betrayed, and there is nothing to betray. 

It is all straightforward. 

There is no friction of your days, your body, your 
thoughts, your passions, which has not deliberately and 
calmly been prepared — and which shall not deliberately and 
calmly be removed again when it has played its part. 

There is no prejudice here, or weakness or selfrighteous- 
ness, nor any apartness at all; 

You are included, and all that is done and felt by you 
is done and felt at the same instant by not you; 

Whatever you are and whatever you do, there is One 
who will and does look you candidly in the face, and un- 
derstands you. 

You may recoil from that gaze; but if you learn to en- 
counter and return it (whether in one or many lifetimes) 



34 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

you will see that from it at length all secret terrors, shams, 
disfigurements, death itself, vanish away; 

And you will not only not be alone in the world, but 
you will be a sovereign lord over the world. 

XXV 

Apart from all evil — from all that seems to you evil — 

your Soul, my friend, that towards which you aspire, which 
will become you one day — your true Self — rides, 

Above your phantasmal self continually. 

Do not fear: it is there. 

Through all the baffling and confusion, through all the 
seeming haphazard and labyrinth darkness of life, it is there 
— overseeing; quietly selecting, directing, ordaining. It is 
lord of all. 

If there were chance, it were evil: but there is not. 
The soul surrounds chance and takes it captive; 

And all experience — what you call good and what you 
call evil, alike — it takes and greedily absorbs, nor ever can 
have enough. 

Are you not sometimes aware of your own body how it 
goes about, moving hither and thither? are you not aware of 
it in the street among others, exchanging greetings (and 
those who exchange the greetings absolutely equal before 
you) ? 

Are you not aware of it at night, lying awake, perhaps 
in pain? Are you not aware of it wandering over the hills 
at sunrise, or out at sea — in the agonised white faces of 
the people on board — and the ship is foundering? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 35 

Are you not aware of It North and South, East and 
West, by day and night, in winter and summer, in childhood 
and ia age, gathering, culling, assimilating, without end, and 
with unerring instinct? 

And You, all the time— YOU? 

What? — Like some great Egyptian King-God, seated, 
marble, with wide eyes looking out over the procession, 
chariots and horsemen, which creeps past in his honor — 
over them to the plains and the winding river. 

Do not fear; do not be discouraged by the tiny insolences 
of people. For yourself be only careful that you are true. 

The dreams of the dark-faced yearning swift-souled 
Egyptians, conceiving into stone eternal types of calm pas- 
sion, the dreams of Pheidias, the dreams of the dreamers of 
all the earth falling passionate before the visionary beauty 
of womanhood and manhood — ^Are true. 

The dust, the wretched blur and distortion are but for 
a moment. They are no more than they are. When you 
shall behold yourself in the clean mirror of God you shall 
be wholly satisfied. 

The body Is a root of the soul. As the body In air, so 
the soul sustains itself in love. 

The medium in which the Knowledge of Yourself sub- 
sists is Equality. When you have penetrated Into that 
medium (as the young shoot penetrates into the sunlight) 
you shall know that It Is so — ^you shall realise Yourself — 
but not till then. 

Hereafter the face of Nature, the faces of the sea and 



36 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the fields, the faces of the animals — hereafter the faces of 
them that pass in the street — are changed. 

Nothing escapes, the line is cast over them all, they 
cannot choose but yield themselves — to you, my friend — 
delivering the essence of their life to you. 

Hereafter certain things, all-important before, become 
indifferent ; certain thoughts w^ith w^hich you had tormented 
yourself torment you no longer; the chains fall off. On 
the other hand the ways which were forbidden and inacces- 
sible become accessible — on all hands the doors stand open 
to your touch. 

XXVI 

Wonderful! The doors that were closed stand open. 

Yet how slight a thing it is. 

The upturning of a palm? the curve of a lip, an eyelid? 

Nothing. 

Nothing that can be seen with the mortal eye or heard 

by the ear, nothing that can be definitely thought, spoken, 

or written in a book- 
Yet the doors that were trebled-bolted and barred, and 

the doors weed-overgrown and with rusty old hinges, 
Fly open of themselves. 

XXVII 

Did you once desire to shine among your peers — or did 
you shrink from the knowledge of your own defect In the, 
midst of them? 

Did you, friend, covet so to be more beautiful, witty, 
virtuous — to be able to tell a story or sustain an argument 



TOWARDS DEMOCiRACY 37 

well, or to be able to discourse on any subject, or to be 
a skilful rider or a good shot? 

Or shrank from the ridicule which the reverse of these 
excited — which was certain and Is still certain to come upon 
you? 

Was it really your own anxious face you used to keep 
catching In the glass? was It really you who had so many 
things, one way or another, you wanted to conceal from 
others — so many opinions too to disguise? 

All that Is changed now. 

But what If your prayers had been granted? What if 
you had become exceptional and had secured for yourself 
a place with the strong and the gifted and the beautiful? 

What if when you arrived the eyes of all had been 
turned upon you ; and when you had passed by — one by one, 
sad, thoughtful, depressed, the weak more conscious of his 
or her weakness, the stupid more conscious of stupidity, the 
deformed more painfully conscious of his or her deformity, 
to their solitary chambers they had gone apart and prayed 
they had never been born? 

What If you had taken advantage of the weak and de- 
fenceless and oppressed of the whole Earth — and had bar- 
tered away belief In the Soul standing omnipotent in the 
most despised things? 

What If you had gladly disguised and covered your own 
defect, allowing thus the ignorant ridicule of the world to 
fall more heavily on those who could not or would not 
act a lie? 

What if you had been a rank deserter, a cowardly slave, 
taking refuge always with the stronger side? 

Ah! what if to one weary traveler In the world, in the. 



38 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

steep path painfully mounting, you making it steeper still 
had added the final stone of stumbling and despair? 

Better to be effaced, crazy, criminal, deformed, degraded. 

Better instead of the steep to be the most dull flat and 
commonplace road. 

Better to go clean underfoot of all weak and despised 
persons — so that they shall not even notice that you are 
there ; 

None so rude and uneducated but you shall go under- 
foot of them, none so criminal but you shall when the 
occasion serves go underfoot of them, none so outcast but 
they shall pass along you and not even notice that you are 
there. 

XXVIII 

The undistinguished old Earth! the dusty clods! 

The mere brown handfuls crumbled through the fingers, 
out of which proceed the trees and the grasses and the 
animals roaming through them, and man with his vast- 
aspiring religions and civilisations. 

The common and universal ; 

The servant girl tying up her hair before the broken 
mirror hung from a nail in the wall ; the daisy child-face 
looking at you from the side of the path as you pass; the 
slow humor of old gaffers on the village seat in the sun: 

These contain you. With all your ambitions you cannot 
escape and go beyond these. It is impossible. 

The bride attiring herself in her white veil, the brilliant 
and admired wit of the salons, the mathematician in his 
study, cannot go beyond these. 

Any more than the earth can go beyond and fly out of 
space. It is impossible; it is unthinkable. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 39 

Far around and beyond whatever is exceptional and 
illustrious in human life stretches that which is average and 
unperceived ; 

All distinctions, all attainments, all signal beauty, skill, 
wit, and whatever a man can exhibit in himself, swim and 
are lost in that great ocean. 

The subtle learning of the learned, the beauty of the 
exceptionally beautiful, the wit of the witty, the fine man- 
ners and customs of the courtly — all these things proceed 
immediately out of the common and undistinguished people 
and those who stand in direct contact with Nature, and 
return into them again. 

The course of all is the same; they are tossed up thinner 
and thinner, into mere spray at last — like a wave from 
the breast of the Ocean — and fall back again. 

You try to set yourself apart from the vulgar. It is in 
vain. In that instant vulgarity attaches itself to you. 

If it did not, you would cease to exist. 

XXIX 

Gold is not finer than lead, nor lead than gold (every 
atom of each has its own life movement intelligence, and 
ridicules epithets) ; 

The stars are not more human to the soul than is the 
deep background of Night behind them. And what would 
the shoal of merry leaping children playing there in the sun 
be without the mother-love in which they swim all the 
while as in an ocean? 

To be Yourself, to have measureless Trust; to enjoy 
all, to possess nothing. 

That which you have, your skill, your strength, your 



40 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

knack of pleasant thoughts — they belong to all. It is a fact, 
and the others looking on you know it. 

That which you have not, your scornful defects, your 
dumbnesses, your aches and pains and silent hours of 
suffering, to understand that you can give of them too, in- 
exhaustible store — as the old brown earth gives out of her 
heart, to men; and she knows it, but they do not know it. 

To walk along the path which has an equal good on 
either hand ; to give the sign of equality ; 

To entertain no possible fear or doubt about the upshot 
of things — to be Yourself, to have measureless Trust: 

Perhaps that is best of all. 

XXX 

Curious how much — and the disentangling of self — de- 
pends upon Ideals! 

Who is this, for instance, easy with open shirt, and 
brown neck and face — the whites of his eyes just seen in 
the sultry twilight — through the city garden swinging? 

The fountain plashes cool in its basin, and mixes its 
murmur with the sound of feet going to and fro upon 
graveled walks; 

The massed foliage above catches the evening light, 
catches the rising wind, and sways like the sea on a calm 
day; the voices of children are heard — but who is this? 

[Who anyhow is he that is simple and free and without 
afterthought? who passes among his fellows without con- 
straint and without encroachment, without embarrassment 
and without grimaces, and does not act from motives? 

Who is ignorant or careless of what is termed politeness, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 41 

who makes life wherever he goes desirable, and removes 
stumbling-blocks instead of creating them?] 

Grave and strong and untamed, 

This is the clear-browed unconstrained tender face, with 
full lips and bearded chin, this is the regardless defiant 
face I love and trust; 

Which I came out to see, and having seen do not forget. 

And not I alone. 

See! on the little public round the fountain scattered — on 
the seats lounging, or walking to and fro — the strange effect ! 

The dressed-up man of the world eyes him curiously — 
and does not forget; 

The pale student eyes him: he envies his healthy face 
and unembarrassed manner; 

The delicate lady sees him well, though she does not 
seem to ; secretly now she loathes her bejeweled lord and 
desires piteously the touch of this man's muscular lithe 
sun-embrowned body; 

The common people salute him as their equal and call 
him by his name; the children know him: they run after 
him and catch him by the hand. 

Curious! how all the poetry, the formative life, of the 
scene — the rushing scent of the lime trees, the evening light, 
the swaying of the foliage, the rustle of feet below. 

The yearning threads of the fine lady's life — how the 
sympathy of the little public by the fountain — all gathers 
round this figure. 

There was a time when the sympathy and the ideals 
of men gathered round other figures; 

When the crowned king, or the priest in procession, or 



42 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the knight errant, or the man of letters In his study, were 
the Imaginative forms to which men clung; 

But now before the easy homely garb and appearance of 
this man as he swings past In the evening, all these others 
fade and grow dim. They come back after all and cling 
to him. 

And this Is one of the slowly unfolded meanings of 
Democracy. 

XXXI 

The world travels on — and shall travel on. 

A few centuries shall not exhaust the meanings of It. In 
you and me too, inevitably. Its meanings wait their un- 
folding. 

No old laws, precedents, combinations of men or weapons, 
can retard it; no new laws, schemes, combinations, dis- 
coveries, can hasten it; but only the new births within 
the Soul, you and me. 

Sacred for this Is the Day and sacred Is the Night, 
sacred are Life and Death because, O wonderful, of this! 

When Yes has once been pronounced In that region 
then the No of millions is nothing at all ; then fire, the 
stake, death, ridicule, and bitter extermination, are of no 
avail whatever; 

When the Ideal has once alighted, when It has looked 
forth from the windows with ever so passing a glance upon 
the Earth, then we may go in to supper, you and I, and 
take our ease — the rest will be seen to; 

When a new desire has declared Itself within the human 
heart, when a fresh plexus is forming among the nerves — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 43 

then the revolutions of nations are already decided, and 
histories unwritten are written. 

XXXII 

I charge you, O traveler, that you disbelieve not — a voice 
comes in the cool of the evening: 

I charge you that in the secret unspoken word you 
disbelieve not, sacred, and the first almighty Thing, 

Moving among cities and over the open sea — advancing 
to deliverance in us; 

Night and day, youth and old age, willing and unwill- 
ing — advancing to deliverance in us. 

Dumb and of no account, her beauty now and then 
only (or at night when no one is near) before the glass 
disrobing, trembling, lonely, unresponded — yet mightier than 
all the array and splendor of the Earth — I charge you that 
you do not disbelieve! 

Outwards all proceeds: Brahma from himself sheds and 
shreds the universe; I from myself, you from yourself. 

To-day the slave goes first, in his chains, and the voice- 
less, and those that are without arguments and always in 
the wrong; 

And the prisoner with slouched head, and the suspected 
and insulted in rags, and those whose hearts bleed silently 
because of what they see; 

And the old forsaken mother, and the cast-aside woman, 
and the child, and the favorless and the drunkard shall 
go first; 

The mechanic to-day shall go before his master, the 
bricklayer shall be saluted in the street before the archi- 



44 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

tect, the navvy shall be accounted more than the politician, 
and I w^ill give the illiterate the advantage of those that 
read and w^rite. 

The scouted and the exiled and the unheard-of, laborers 
in the fields and in mines, quarrymen and limekilners and 
brickburners and makers and cleaners of drains and house- 
hold drudges, shall be nearest in honor: the burdened of 
every day, and the sufferers, the over-w^orked and hope- 
forlorn, and the concealers of sin and sorrow^ and despair, 
shall head the procession. 

And with them One (of whom I have spoken) moving 
unseen hither and thither — side by side first with one and 
then with another — shall resume and make all plain, shall 
be himself the beginning and ending of it all. 

XXXIII 

When He descends, when He comes to take dominion — 

Do you think that anything else will do? do you think 
that he will perhaps be put off by offers sufficiently liberal, 
and arguments? 

Do you think that he will be deeply Impressed by your 
grave How, how? and It cannot be? — or that he will ascend 
into your high houses and take his ease with you, and 
lounge smoking and looking wearily at the sky till he forgets 
what he has come for? 

Do you think he will pay great attention to your hat 
and boots, or to what they write before or after your 
name, or to what they say of you next door — or will ask 
what church you go to, or what conventicle or schism- 
shop, or enquire Into the soundness of your investments? 

Do you think he will drive about with you in your 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 45 

carriages dispensing charities like an Oriental prince — and 
occasionally even say a few words to the coachman — or that 
it will be pretence or mere kindly patronage if he prefers 
the coachman's company to yours? 

Do you think that perhaps he will be very bland and 
gentle, and never be rude or coarsely dressed, and that he 
will be highly interested in what you tell him, and that 
he won't at a single look know all that ever you did? 

Do you suppose that he will not know which is the top 
and which is the bottom of things, or that he will be 
impressed by your cleverness and smart repartees, or that he 
will reckon you up by the number of books you have read? 

Do not deceive yourself — for it is yourself that you are 
trying to deceive — not Him. 

XXXIV 

The magistrate sits on the bench, but he does not exercise 
judgment; the doctor dispenses medicine but has heard no 
tidings of what health is; the parson opens his mouth, but 
no intelligible sound comes forth ; the merchant distributes 
evils just the same as goods. 

Do you suppose it is all for nothing that disbelief has 
gone out over the world ; that weariness has taken possession 
of the souls of the rich, and that fatal darkness enfolds the 
head of wealth and education ; 

That men disbelieve in the human heart and think that 
the source of power is set otherwhere than in its burning 
glowing depths : that the powers which they worship are but 
so many withered emblems of power — dead scoriae nodding 
and jostling over the living lava-stream? 



46 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Do you suppose it is all for nothing that the eyes of 
brothers avoid in the street, and none sees what is before 
him; that the heel is upon the head, and Earth alone re- 
gards the faces of them that are oppressed — that the stones in 
the wintry fields are become confidants, and the ground is 
sown with compressed thought, like seeds? 

[When yet there is peace over the world, as of the Sea 
swooning away into its hollows; and differences are sullen 
like rocks at ebb-tide, and brackish dismal mudflats lie be- 
tween, and the sun stands motionless overhead, and Con- 
tempt trickles malarious, and Avoidance and Negation and 
Fear loom up against the sky, and men cling like rotting 
weeds about their bases, and the soul stifles for the swingeing 
life of the waves and the breath of the wind that blows 
from one end of the world to the other.] 

Do you suppose it means nothing that that which satisfied 
once satisfies now no more (not till the whole round has 
been made), but unrest and hunger are eating through 
men's souls? 

That a new need gone up is more than all precedent, 
and History shrivels before the will, even if it be only 
of one man ; that the pilgrimage has begun, and men are 
leaving their long-loved homes by thousands — and the 
tenderest-hearted are the first to sever the old ties? 

That centuries of suffering have compressed thought and 
purpose into one — till they are harder than rock; so that 
you shall remove mountains, but you shall not remove the 
word which has gone forth? 

That expediency and logic expostulate in vain, and man 
has become wholly unreasonable, and is calm to drop utility 
into the bottomless pit; and the wise cover their lights, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 47 

but the fools flash theirs and are whirled away — like fireflies 
in a thunderstorm? 

Do you suppose it means nothing when the godlike Hand 
comes forth — the awful hand, sacred with the kisses of the 
generations of men? 

When the hand of Necessity comes forth from the cloud 
and covers dark the faces of them who have never known 
it, turning them back from their ruin — but stands in the 
clear sky, beckoning bright, like a pillar of fire for weary 
fugitives ? 

When the awful vision moves across the sky, and the 
earth is electric under it — and the grass stands stiffly, and 
the blue thistle in the hedge is erect with meaning. 

And men are amorous for the naked stinging touch 
of the world, and to wrestle limb to limb with the wind 
and the waves; 

When poverty and hardship smile for their espousal, 
and fierce endurance is fused in one passion with love, and 
the glitter of concealment is torn away, and the loins are 
compressed and the eyes aflame with lust, 

Towards that which shall surely be born? 

When Wealth is slowly and visibly putrefying and 
putrefying the old order of things; 

When the surface test is final — the rainbow-colored scum 
— and society rotting down beneath it ; a trick of clothing 
or speech, metallic chink in the pocket, white skin, soft 
hands, fawning and lying looks — everywhere the thrust of 
rejection, the bond of redemption nowhere; the sacred gifts 
all violated stale and profaned — men and women falling off 
from them listless, like satiated leeches; 



48 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

When Labor is not loyal and true, nor the Laborers 
loyal and true to each other; when a man has no pride in 
the creation of his hands, nor rejoices to make it perfect; 
when machinery is perfectly organised and human souls are 
hopelessly disorganised ; 

Do you think all these things mean nothing? 

XXXV 

Ah, England ! Ah, beating beating heart ! 

No wonder you are weary! weary of talk! 

Weary seeking amid the scramble, amid the scramble 
of words and the scramble of wealth, 

Amid the fashionable, the scientific, the artistic, the com- 
mercial, the political, the learned and literary scramble — 
weary 

Seeking, seeking, seeking for a God! 

As it ever was and will be — 

As a thief in the night, silently and where you least expect, 
Unlearned perhaps, without words, without arguments, 
without influential friends or money — leaning on himself 
alone — 

Without accomplishments and graces, without any lini- 
ments for your old doubts, or recipes for constructing new 
theological or philosophical systems— 

With just the whole look of himself in his eyes — 
The Son of Man shall — yes, shall — appear in your midst. 
O beating heart, your lover and your judge shall appear. 

He will not bring a new revelation; he will not at first 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 49 

make any reply to the eager questions about death and 
immortality; he will present no stainless perfection; 

But he will do better: he will present something abso- 
lute, primal — the living rock — something necessary and at 
first hand, and men will cling to him therefor; 

He will restore the true balance; he will not condemn, 
but he will be absolute in himself ; 

He will be the terrible judge to whom every one will run ; 

He will be the lover and the judge in one. 

The Son of Man — 

Ponder well these words. 

After all I cannot explain them: it is Impossible to ex- 
plain that which is itself initial and elementary. 

You will look a thousand times before you see that which 
you are looking for — it is so simple — 

Not science, O beating heart, nor theology, nor rapplngs, 
nor philanthropy, nor high acrobatic philosophy, 

But the Son — and so equally the Daughter — of Man. 

XXXVI 

I HEAR the sound of the whetting of scythes. 
The beautiful grass stands tall In the meadows, 
mixed with sorrel and buttercups; the steamships move on 
across the sea, leaving trails of distant smoke. I see the 
tall white cliffs of Albion. 

I smell the smell of the newmown grass, the waft of 
the thought of Death; the white fleeces of the clouds move 
on in the everlasting blue, with the dashing and the spray 
of waves below. 

It comes and recedes again, and comes nearer — out of 



50 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the waves and the tall white cliffs and the clouds and the 
grass. 

XXXVII 

The towers of Westminster stand up by the river, and, 
within, the supposed rulers contend and argue, but they 
hear nothing. It comes to them last. 

The long lines of princely mansions stretch through Bel- 
gravia and Kensington — closelipped, deaf, plaguestricken. 

Lines of carriages crowd the Park; tier above tier at the 
Opera are faces and flowers; there are clubs and literary 
cliques and entertainments, but of the voice of human joy, 
native once more in the world, there is scarcely a note. 

Over all the towns and villages of the land the fingers 
of the spires point dumb to the driving clouds. 

York Minster stands up like a watchtower in the rising 
sun, and from the midst of its Roman walls looks out over 
leagues of meadows and cornfields ; Salisbury stands up, 
and Ely lonesome among its old-world fens; but they report 
nothing seen. 

From the Hoe at Plymouth the promenade loafers look 
down upon the decks of passing vessels; the line of the 
breakwater stretches, and the wild sea beyond; 

The convicts, thousands, motionless-faced, in yellow- 
dressed gangs dot the thinly-grassed rocks and fortress walls 
of the Isle of Portland. 

Victoria, the Queen, peers from the high windows of 
Osborne back upon Portsmouth crowded with shipping, and 
the grass downs of the Island that lies behind it. 

The mail-steamers go to and fro, of Dover and Folke- 
stone, the passengers arrive from the Continent, idlers are 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 51 

watching the arrivals, and police officers In disguise — but 
they report nothing; 

Winchelsea and Rye stand forgotten by the water, on 
rocks beaten now only by the waving meadows; the old 
martello towers dot the long low shores. 

Down the Thames with the tide the great vessels come 
swinging; St. Paul's looks out upon them, white. In far 
glimpses over the great city; the sea-gulls dip and hover 
where the waters meet. The cutters of Yarmouth leave the 
river and make between the long sands for the open sea 
and the banks. 

XXXVIII 

England spreads like a map below me. I see the mud- 
flats of the Wash striped with water at low tide, the em- 
bankments grown with mugwort and sea-asters, and Boston 
Stump and King's Lynn, and the squaresall brigs In the 
offing. 

Beachy Head stands up beautiful, with white walls and 
pinnacles, from Its slopes of yellow poppy and bugloss; the 
sea below creeps with a grey fog, the vessels pass and are 
folded out of sight within it. I hear their foghorns sound- 
ing. 

Flamborough Head stands up, dividing the waves. Up 
its steep gullies the fishermen haul their boats; In its caves 
the waters make perpetual music. 

I see the rockbound coast of Anglesey with projecting 
ribs of wrecks; the hills of Wicklow are faintly outlined 
across the water. I ascend the mountains of Wales; the 
tarns and streams He silver below me, the valleys are dark. 



52 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Moel Siabod stands up beautiful, and Trifan and Cader 
Idris in the morning air. 

I descend the Wye, and pass through the ancient streets 
of Monmouth and of Bristol. I thread the feathery birch- 
haunted coombs of Somerset. 

I ascend the high points of the Cotswolds, and look out 
over the rich vale of Gloucester to the Malvern hills, and 
see the old city clustering round its Church, and the broad 
w^aters of the Severn, and the distant towers of Berkeley 
Castle. 

The river-streams run on below me. The broad deep- 
bosomed Trent through rich meadows full of cattle, under 
tall shady trees runs on. I trace it to its birthplace in the 
hills. I see the Derbyshire Derwent darting in trout- 
haunted shallows over its stones. I taste and bathe in the 
clear brown moor-fed water. 

I see the sweet-breathed cottage homes and homesteads 
dotted for miles and miles and miles. It comes near to 
them. I enter the wheelwright's cottage by the angle of 
the river. The door stands open against the water, and 
catches its changing syllables all day long; roses twine, and 
the smell of the woodyard comes in wafts. 

The Castle rock of Nottingham stands up bold over the 
Trent valley, the tall flagstaff waves its flag, the old 
market-place is full of town and country folk. The river 
goes on broadening seaward. I see where it runs beneath 
the great iron swing-bridges of railroads, there are canals 
connecting with it, and the sails of the canal-boats gliding 
on a level with the meadows. 

The great sad colorless flood of the Humber stretches 
before me, the low-lying banks, the fog, the solitary vessels, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 53 

the brackish marshes and the water-birds; Hull stretches 
with its docks, vessels are unlading — bags of shell-fish, car- 
goes of oranges, timber, fish ; I see the flat lands beyond 
Hull, and the enormous flights of pewits. 

The Thames runs down — with the sound of many voices. 
I hear the sound of the saw-mills and flour-mills of the 
Cotswolds, I can see racing boats and hear the shouts of 
partisans, villages bask in the sun below me; Sonning and 
Maidenhead ; anglers and artists are hid in nooks among 
tall willow-herbs; I glide with tub and outrigger past 
flower-gardens, meadows, parks; parties of laughing girls 
handle the oars and tiller ropes; Teddington, Twicken- 
ham, Richmond, Brentford glide past; I hear the songs, I 
hear Elizabethan echoes; I come within sound of the roar 
of London. 

I see the woodland and rocky banks of the Tavy and 
the Tamar, and of the arrowy Dart. The Yorkshire Ouse 
winds sluggish below me; afar off I catch the Sussex Ouse 
and the Arun, breaking seaward through their gaps in the 
Downs; I look down from the Cheshire moors upon the 
Dee. 

In their pride the beautiful cities of England stand up 
before me; from the midst of her antique elms and lilac 
and laburnum haunted gardens the grey gateways and 
towers of Cambridge stand up; ivy-grown Warwick peeps 
out of thick foliage; I see Canterbury and Winchester and 
Chester, and Worcester proud by her river-side, and the 
ancient castles — York and Lancaster looking out seaward, 
and Carlisle; I see the glistening of carriage wheels and 
the sumptuous shine of miles of sea frontage at Brighton 
and Hastings and Scarborough; Clifton climbs to her 



54 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

heights over the Avon; the ruins of Whitby Abbey are 
crusted with spray. 

I hear the ring of hammers in the ship-yards of Chatham 
and Portsmouth and Keyham, and look down upon wilder- 
nesses of masts and dock-basins. I see the observatory at 
Greenwich and catch the pulses of star-taken time spreading 
in waves over the land. I see the delicate spider-web of 
the telegraphs, and the rush of the traffic of the great main 
lines, North, West, and South. I see the solid flow of 
business men northward across London Bridge in the morn- 
ing, and the ebb at evening. I see the eternal systole and 
diastole of exports and imports through the United King- 
dom, and the armies of those who assist in the processes of 
secretion and assimilation — and the great markets. 

I explore the palaces of dukes — the parks and picture 
galleries — Chatsworth, Hardwicke, Arundel; and the num- 
berless old Abbeys. I walk through the tall-windowed 
hospitals and asylums of the great cities and hear chants 
caught up and wandering from ward to ward. 

I see all over the land the beautiful centuries-grown 
villages and farmhouses nestling down among their trees; 
the dear old lanes and footpaths and the great clean high- 
ways connecting; the fields, every one to the people known 
by its own name, and hedgerows and little straggling copses, 
and village greens; I see the great sweeps of country, the 
rich wealds of Sussex and Kent, the orchards and deep lanes 
of Devon, the willow-haunted flats of Huntingdon, Cam- 
bridge and South Lincolnshire; Sherwood Forest and the 
New Forest, and the light pastures of the North and South 
Downs; the South and Midland and Eastern agricultural 
districts, the wild moorlands of the North and West, and 
the intermediate districts of coal and iron. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 55 

The oval-shaped manufacturing heart of England lies 
below me; at night the clouds flicker in the lurid glare; 
I hear the sob and gasp of pumps and the solid beat of 
steam and tilt-hammers ; I see streams of pale lilac and 
saffron-tinted fire. I see the swarthy Vulcan-reeking towns, 
the belching chimneys, the slums, the liquor-shops, chapels, 
dancing saloons, running grounds, and blameless remote 
villa residences. 

I see the huge warehouses of Manchester, the many- 
storied mills, the machinery, the great bale-laden drays, 
the magnificent horses; I walk through the Liverpool Ex- 
change ; the brokers stand in knots ; the greetings, the frock- 
coats, the rosebuds; the handling and comparing of cotton 
samples. 

Leeds lies below me ; I hear the great bell ; I see the 
rush along Boar Lane and Briggate. I enter the hot ma- 
chine shops, smelling of oil and wooldust. I see Sheffield 
among her hills, and the white dashing of her many water- 
wheels, and the sulphurous black cloud going up to heaven 
in her midst. 

Newcastle I recognise, and her lofty bridge ; and I look 
out over the river gates of the Mersey. 

XXXIX 

I see a great land poised as in a dream — waiting for the 
word by which it may live again. 

I see the stretched sleeping figure — waiting for the kiss 
and the re-awakening. 

I hear the bells pealing, and the crash of hammers, 
and see beautiful parks spread — as in toy show. 



56 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

I see a great land waiting for its own people to come 
and take possession of it. 

XL 

The clouds fly overhead still, and the waves curdle in 
the blue beneath; the smell of the newmown grass comes 
and the tall white clifFs stand up. 

All depends upon a Word spoken. 

Do you think perhaps that there is no answer? do you 
think that the high lighthouses looking out over the water, 
the sea itself careering beyond them, that the ploughed 
lands, and the rocks that are hewn into great cities, are 
indifferent to who own, to who trespass upon them? that 
they are dumb, dead, and of no account? 

Do you think that they have nothing to say to all this, 
that they will not deliver themselves upon whom they choose, 
that they have it not in their power to bless and to curse, 
ah! that they cannot repay love a hundredfold? 

Do you not know that the streets, houses, public build- 
ings of the city where you live, have tongues, arms, eyes? 
that they are on the watch? that the trees and streams 
around you are alive with answers, and that the common 
clay knows the tread of its true owner? 

Do you think that England or any land will rise into 
life, will display her surpassing beauty, will pour out her 
love, to the touch of false owners — to people who finger 
banknotes, who make traffic, buying and selling her, who 
own by force of titledeeds, laws, police — who yet deny her, 
turning their backs upon her winds and her waves, and 
ashamed to touch her soil with their hands? 

Do you think that she will arise to the call of these? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 57 

O do you not know how she yearns for the mastery of her 
true owners, how she leans herself backward, displaying her 
charms, inviting — breathing courage even into faint souls 
to know their manhood — to come upon her boldly, to let 
none stand between? 

O know well that it shall be. That the land they dwell 
on, that the Earth, for whatsoever people is worthy, shall 
become impossible to be separated from them — even in 
thought. 

Of those who are truly the People, they are jealous of 
their land ; the woods and the fields and the open sea are 
covered with their love^ — inseparable from life. 

Every hedgerow, every old lumb and coppice, the nature 
of the soils in every field and part of a field, the suffs, the 
bedrock, pastures, ploughlands and fallows; the quarries 
and places of the best stone for roadmending, building, 
walling, roofing, draining; the best stuff for mending 
footpaths ; the best water for miles round, and the taste and 
quality of the various wells and springs; the clays for 
puddling and for brickburning, the basseting out and dips 
of the beds; the cattle and livestock up and down, their 
various breeds, treatment and condition ; the moors, forests, 
streams, rivers, seacoasts, familiar by sunlight, moonlight, 
starlight, and on dark nights — every nook and corner of 
them; the old trees and their histories, the waterside trees, 
and where pheasants frequently roost, and the places for 
netting rabbits and hares, or for spearing trout by lantern- 
light; or where the crab-apple and cluster-berry and moun- 
tain-flax and agrimony grow; 

The haunts of the wild duck and snipe, the decoy of 
the corncrake, the nests of the storm-cock and the water-hen 



58 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

and the pewit; the legends told of old hollows and caves 
and crags; the bold and beautiful headlands, the taste of 
the air upon them ; the old streets in the towns, and their 
histories, and the histories of the houses in them, and of 
those who lived in the houses ; the old villages and their 
traditions, customs, specialties, notorious characters, feasts 
and frolics ; 

The knowledge of the arts of sea and river fishing, oys- 
ter and scallop dredging, the trawl, the seine and the drift- 
net, farming, fruit-growing, timber-growing, pilling and 
dressing, canal-making, sea-walling, ship-building, irriga- 
tion ; the great crafts in stone, wood, iron — of the mason's, 
the smith's, the joiner's, the tool-maker's work; of the clean 
use of tools, of all faithful and perfect work, and the joy 
and majesty that comes of it — 

Everything that the land has — calls an answer in the 
breasts of the people, and quickly grows love for the use 
of those that live on it. 

Without this love no People can exist; this is the crea- 
tion nourishment and defence of Nations. It is this that 
shall save England (as it has saved Ireland) ; which ulti- 
mately — of the very Earth — shall become the nurse of Hu- 
manity. 

Between a great people and the earth springs a passion- 
ate attachment, lifelong — and the earth loves indeed her 
children, broad-breasted, broad-browed, and talks with them 
night and day, storm and sunshine, summer and winter 
alike. 

[Here indeed is the key to the whole secret of educa- 
tion.] 

Owners and occupiers then fall into their places; the 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 59 

trees wave proud and free upon the headlands; the little 
brooks run with a wonderful new music under the bram- 
bles and the grass. 

[Determined — Is the word henceforth — to worship noth- 
ing, no ownership, which is unreal ; no title-deeds, money- 
smells, respectabilities, authorities; 

To be arrogant, unpersuadable, faithful, free — not un- 
worthy of the trees waving upon the high tops and of the 
earth rolling through the starlit night.] 

Government and laws and police then fall into their 
places — the earth gives her own laws; Democracy just be- 
gins to open her eyes and peep! and the rabble of unfaith- 
ful bishops, priests, generals, landlords, capitalists, lawyers, 
kings, queens, patronisers and polite idlers goes scuttling 
down Into general oblivion. 

Faithfulness emerges, self-reliance, self-help, passionate 
comradeship. 

Freedom emerges, the love of the land — the broad waters, 
the air, the undulating fields, the flow of cities and the peo- 
ple therein, their faces and the looks of them no less than 
the rush of the tides and the slow hardy growth of the oak 
and the tender herbage of spring and stiff clay and storms 
and transparent air. 

All depends upon a word spoken or unspoken. 

The clouds fly overhead still, and the smell of the new- 
mown grass is wafted by. It comes and recedes again. 

I hear the awful syllable Change, and see all things, 
qualities, impersonations, gliding from the embraces of 
their own names; but I hear beyond; 

I hear beyond the sound of the hone and strickle, and 



6o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

look in the eyes of the Mower, under the shade of his broad 
straw hat. 

It comes and recedes again, and comes nearer. 

The little waves lip up against the great black ship as 
she glides down river — 

sailor sitting on a plank over the side, beware! 

The ship itself, the rigging, the tidal river, the docks, 
the wharves, and long busy streets, and country beyond — 
the shows of life and death — 

Who makes and who unmakes them? 

1 touch you lightly. I am the spray. 

I touch you that you remember, and forget not who you 
are. 

XLI 

I look upon him who makes all things. 

I sit at his feet in silence as he lights his pipe, and feel 
the careless resting of his fingers upon my neck. 

I see the fire leaping in the grate; I see the nodding of 
grasses and blackberry sprays in the hedges; I hear the long 
surge and hush of the wind; 

I hear his voice speaking to me. 

O rivers and hills of Albion, O clouds that sail from 
the Atlantic to the North Sea, and wrinkled old Abbeys 
and modern towers and streets of heavily laden drays, 

Behind your masks I am aware of an imperceptible 
change: surely it must be the appearance of a Face. 

XLII 

The word travels on. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 6i 

I have been on tramp, and my boots are dusty and hob- 
nailed, and my clothes are torn : do not ask me into your 
house; (God knows; I might spoon my food with a knife!) 

Give me a penny on the doorstep and let me pass on. 
I have sat with you long, and loved you well, unknown to 
you, but now I go otherwhere. 

XLIII 

The word travels on. 

Out of the mists of time, out of Innumerable births, of 
endless journeys, transfigurements, lives, deaths, sorrows, 
emerging, my voice sounds to myself, to you, nearer than 
all thought: tentatively trying the first notes, wonderingly 
at its beauty, of the Song — strange word ! — of Joy. 

To spread abroad over the earth, to be realised in time: 
Freedom to be realised in time, for which the whole of 
History has been a struggle and a preparation: 

The dream of the soul's slow disentanglement. 

[O Blessed is he that has passed away! 

Blessed, alive or dead, whom the bitter taunts of exist- 
ence reach not — nor betrayals protruded from dear faces, 
nor weariness nor cold nor pain — dwelling in heaven, and 
looking forth in peace upon the world. 

Blessed, thrice blessed, by day, by night ! Blessed who 
sleeps with him, blessed who eats walks talks, blessed who 
labors in the field beside him ; blessed whoever, though he 
be dead, shall know him to be eternally near.] 

I am the poet of hitherto unuttered joy. 

A little bird told me the secret in the night, and hence- 



62 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

forth I go about seeking to whom to whisper it. 
I see the heavens laughing, I discern the half-hidden 
faces of the gods wherever I go, I see the transparent-opaque 
veil in which they hide themselves; yet I dare not say what I 
see — lest I should be locked up ! 

Children go with me, and rude people are my compan- 
ions. I trust them and they me. Day and night we are 
together and are content. 

To them what I would say Is near; yet is it in nothing 
that can be named, or In the giving or taking of any one 
thing; but rather In all things. 

Laughter, O laughter! O endless journey! O soul ex- 
haled through suffering, arising free! Little bird petrel 
through the stormy seas diving darting— thy boundless 
home— O clouds and sunshine shattering! Elf in thine 
own dark eyes gazing! O beckoner of companions, hasten- 
ing onward— winged spirit divine, girt round with laughter, 
laughter, laughter. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 63 



XLIV 

I AM come to be the Interpreter of yourself to yourself; 
[Do I not stand behind the sun and moon, do I not 
wait behind the air that you breathe, for this!] 
Born beyond Maya I now descend into materials. 

The dandelion by the path, and the pink buds of the 
sycamore, and the face of the sweep who comes to sweep 
your chimney, shall henceforth have a new meaning to you, 
(how do you know that I am not the chimney-sweep?) 

The nettles growing against the gate post, and the dry 
log on the grass where you stop and sit, the faithful tool 
that is in your hand and the sweat on your forehead, the 
sound of the dear old village band across far fields — 

These shall be for memorials between us, and I in them 
will surely draw towards you. 

And to you, when I am dead, they shall deliver the words 
which still I had not sense and courage to speak. Hear 
them. 

Where I was not faithful these shall be faithful to you ; 
where I was vain and silly these shall look you clear of all 
vanity and silliness ; where I was afraid to utter my thoughts 
dumb things shall utter for you words impossible to be 
misunderstood. 

The sun shall shine, the clouds draw across the sky, the 
fire leap in the grate, the kettle boil — to purposes which 
you cannot fathom; the simplest shall look you in the face 
to meanings ever profounder and profounder than all 
Thought. 



64 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Behind them, behind the woven veil — accepting, not re- 
jecting, my own vanities, cowardices, giving them also their 
due place — I too wait in silence, till the full-armed shall 
come to give me birth again. 

XLV 

In silence I wait and accept all — the glare of misappre- 
hension I accept — I sit at the fashionable dinner-table and 
accept what is brought to me. 

I am a painter on the house-side, the sight of the distant 
landscape pleases me, and the scraps of conversation caught 
from the street below. My back aches singling turnips 
through the long hot day; my fingers freeze getting po- 
tatoes. 

I help the farmer drive his scared cattle home at midnight 
by the fitful flicker of lightning. I go mowing at early 
morning while the twilight creeps in the North East — I 
sleep in the hot hours — and mow again on into the night. 

I am a seeing unseen atom traveling with others through 
space or remaining centuries in one place; again I resume 
a body and disclose myself. 

I am one of the people who spend their lives sitting on 
their haunches in drawing-rooms and studies; I grow grad- 
ually feebler and fretfuler. I am a boy once more in tall 
hat and gloves walking wearily among crowds of well- 
dressed (hopelessly well-dressed) people, up and down a 
certain promenade. 

I enter the young prostitute's chamber, where he is ar- 
ranging the photographs of fashionable beauties and favorite 
companions, and stay with him; we are at ease and under- 
stand each other. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 65 

I dance at the village feast In the upper room of a public ; 
my partner shows me the steps and figures. The elderly 
harper, so noble and dignified, accompanies his son's fiddle 
— or goes round to collect the pence — but all the while his 
thoughts are with his only daughter in Australia. 

The wheel turns, but whatever it brings uppermost Is 
well. 



XLVI 

I lie abed in illness, and experience strange extensions of 
spirit. I am close to those afar off, and the present and 
near at hand are discounted. I spend nights of pain and 
loneliness. 

I dream of the beautiful life. I go down to the sea with 
fisher folk, and spend chill nights on the great deep under the 
stars; the sun rises on faces round me of freedom and ex- 
perience. I see everywhere the old simple occupations — the 
making and mending of nets, the growing of flax and hemp, 
the tending of gardens, cattle — the old sweet excuses for 
existence, their meaning now partly understood — the faith 
that grows In the open air and out of all honest work till 
It surrounds and redeems the soul. 

The blacksmith blows up his fire ; he listens for the 
sound of the great heat. He taps the glowing Iron In ad- 
vance of the blows of the striker, and turns It deftly with 
the tongs. 

The budder of roses bends among the low bushes; with 
a quick motion he flirts out the wood and binds the bud on 
the wild stock. The wire-weaver stands at his loom, work- 
ing the treadles with his foot and throwing the shuttle with 
alternate hand. 



66 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The old coach-body maker stands at his bench, grey- 
haired, worn, thoughtful — the young apprentice comes down 
whistling from the trimming shop to ask him a question. 

The sunlight streams in broad shafts through the chinks 
of the blinds into the carpenter's shop ; with grizzled beard 
and hair, and something of a stoop in his shoulders, the gov- 
ernor stands penciling out a fresh job ; a tall young fellow 
sits astride of a door-style, cutting a mortise, and a dab of 
light on the floor sends a reflection up in his arch-humored 
face. 

The bathers in the late twilight, almost dark, advance 
naked under the trees by the waterside, five or six together, 
superb, unashamed, scarcely touching the ground. 

The budding pens of love scorch all over me — my skin 
is too tight, I am ready to burst through it — a flaming girdle 
is round my middle. Eyes, hair, lips, hands, waist, thighs — 
O naked mad tremors; in the dark feeding pasturing flames! 

O soul, spreading, spreading — impalpable sunlight behind 
the sunlight! 

The tall thin grey-bearded man I meet daily in the street 
— with lined brow, silent, full of experience; 

The stout matron in the greengrocer's shop, loquacious, 
clear-eyed, with clear indubitable voice; 

The thick-thighed hot coarse-fleshed young bricklayer with 
the strap round his waist; 

The young printer (but he has a wife and family at 
home) with large dreamy projecting eyes, going absent, 
miles away, over his work — thinking of Swedenborg and the 
dance of atoms and angels ; 

The young woman at the refreshment bar, her thick light- 
colored hair, her well-formed features, and the bored look 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 67 

in her eyes as she returns the chaff of the carefully-dressed 
young man across the counter; 

The military-looking official at the door of the hotel — 
the despondency of drink which he conceals beneath his 
loud-voiced smart exterior; 

The ragged boy with rare intense eyes not to be misun- 
derstood — in the midst of much dirt and ignorance the soul 
through suffering enfranchised, exhaled — here too shining 
like the sunlight, redeeming justifying all it lights on; 

The slut of a girl who has become a mother, the ready 
doubt among her neighbors who was the father; the stupid 
loving way in which she crams the child to her breast — 
sitting on a stone by the fire-side utterly oblivious of opinion ; 

The good-natured fair-haired Titan at work in the fields; 
the little woman with large dark eyes who is so clever and 
managing among the poor, and with their children ; 

The thin close-lipped friz-haired commercial traveler, un- 
wearied, walking long distances to save railway or coach 
fare, well posted in all local information for fifty miles 
round ; 

His wife, so comfortable and fore-thoughtful at home, 
so evil-tongued abroad, and the bevy of red-haired red- 
cheeked girls, well drilled in scrubbing and cooking, and not 
without a veneer of accomplishments; 

The railway lamp-foreman, tall, strong, fleet of foot, 
with gentle voice — lover of the fields and flowers, going 
long walks Sundays or late evenings by moonlight — sending 
the balance of his earnings to support his aged father and 
mother; 

The bright sunny girl-child with long beautiful hair 
(envied of the other children) and poignant blossoming lips 
and eyes; 



68 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The girl in the tobacconist's shop, her drooping lashes, 
|ier taper fingers, and provocative inimitable composure — 
and all the time her mother is incurably dying; 

The hunch-backed cobbler, young, thwarted, thinking in- 
cessantly of Jesus — praying night and day for the gift of 
preaching; 

The drunken father reeling home in the rain across 
country — he has more than a mile to go — singing, cursing, 
tumbling hands and knees in the mire ; his son following 
unbeknown at a little distance (he had been watching a 
long time for his father outside the beershop) ; the late moon 
rising on the strange scene, the hiccuped oaths of the old 
man through the silence of the night. 

XLVII 

Lo! I touch you. 

Softly yearningly I touch you, and pass on — dreaming 
the dream of the soul's slow disentanglement. 

Sharp-cut, thin-lipped, sad, scholastic; plain-featured, 
unembarrassed, affectionate; and you, beautiful careless boy! 
and you, strange eternal anxious mother-face! 

How shall I say what I have to say? How shall I speak 
the word which sums up all words that are spoken? How 
shall I speak that for which the moon and the stars and 
running waters and the universe itself subsist, to speak it ? — 
which if it could be uttered in a word there were no need 
of all these things. 

O Death, take me away. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 69 

Take me away, kindly Death; lead me forth, lead me 
through the entire universe. 

Let me pass ; hold me back, I say, no longer ; for I am 
tired, I am sick, of talking — and I forebode other ways. 

For I would be the dust; 

And I would be the silver rays of the moon and the stars, 
and the washing sound of the midnight sea; 

And nourishing sweet air and running water, for the 
lips of them that I choose; 

To pass, to put on the invisible cap, to run round about 
the world, unseen. 

And I will be the plain ungarnished facts of life, with 
continual nearnesses; 

The train arriving at the station shall not be nearer or 
more solid ; nor the lifting and transporting of boxes and 
goods, nor the grasp of the handles to them that open and 
shut the doors. 

I will be the ground underfoot and the common clay; 

The ploughman shall turn me up with his ploughshare 
among the roots of the twitch in the sweet-smelling furrow ; 

The potter shall mould me, running his finger along my 
whirling edge (we will be faithful to one another, he 
and I) ; 

The bricklayer shall lay me; he shall tap me into place 
with the handle of his trowel; 

And to him I will utter the word which with my lips I 
have not spoken. 

XLVIII 

I arise and pass. 



70 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

I am a spirit passing by, a light air on the hills saying 
unto you : In death there Is peace. 

Out of all mortal suffering, out of the bruised and bro- 
ken heart, out of tears, tears — falling seen, falling inward 
and unseen — out of the withering flame of desire, and out 
of all illusion, 

My spirit exhaled — floats free — my brother and sister — 
for you — over the world eternally. 

[Joy, O joy!] 

For you, too, beyond this visible^ — through the gates of 
mortal passion and suffering — for the exhaled spirit. 

For you, too, beyond this broken dream, this bitter wak- 
ing in tears. 

Something — how can I tell It? — which I have seen, which 
I might perhaps give you: and yet which I cannot give you, 
but in me waits also for you — O how long? 

Something that I have promised. I give you the token. 
Faithfully when you recognise and return it shall you have 
that you desire. 

I am the light air on the hills — deny me not; my desire 
which was not satisfied is satisfied, and yet can never be 
satisfied. 

I pass and pass and pass. 

From the hills I creep down Into the great city — fresh 
and pervading through all the streets I pass; 

Him I touch, and her I touch, and you I touch — I can 
never be satisfied. 

I who desired one give myself to all. I who would be 
the companion of one become the companion of all com- 
panions. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 71 

The lowest and who knows me not, him I know best and 
love best; 

The child of the suffering heart I take; my arms pass 
under his shoulders and under the hollow of his thighs; 
his arm lies around my neck, my lips yearn close to his — on 
my breast at length he slumbers peacefully and long. 

The blind and aged woman descends the steps leading to 
the basement of the tall London house; the east wind blows 
bitter with dust along the street; she feels along the wall, 
and for the door, and timidly knocks. I cannot see who 
opens the door, but it is slammed immediately in her face. 
I take her by the hand and speak words to her, and her 
sightless eyes are as though they saw once more. 

Once I walked the world of rocks and grass, of space 
and time, of ambition and action, and could imagine no 
other — for I was in that one ; now I roam through other 
fields and have the freedom of worlds innumerable, and am 
familiar where before was darkness and silence. 

XLIX 

I arise and pass. 

In her tall-windowed sitting room — alone — 

[The setting sun casts long shafts of light across the 
path and beneath the trees where knee-deep in grass a milk- 
white calf is browsing,] 

In her tall-windowed sitting room, with its antique pier- 
glasses and profuse handsome ornaments — alone — 

The old dowager sits. 

Her silver-grey hair lies smooth under a lace cap ; lace 
and silk are her dress, her thin fingers are well stocked with 
rings. 



72 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Lonely is the great house; her old life and the voices of 
children have long passed away. She goes to the window 
to pass the time and through the glass looks out upon the 
still landscape; after a while she turns and rings a bell — 
a tall young footman appears. 

Her voice is quiet and gentle as she gives her order, and 
flexible still with intelligence ; very taking with their old- 
fashioned refinement are her manners; 

But In a moment what she requires is there, and she is 
alone again — everything is done for her. 

Into her chair once more she resigns herself, to knit an 
antimacassar. 

Without, how peaceful the scene! 

The crisp sound of browsing, the liquid blue-violet eyes 
of the white calf, her budding horns, her sweet breath, her 
muscular tongue encircling the tufts of grass, the impatient 
sideway thrust of the head with which she tears them. 

The fearlessness with which she gives her head to be 
caressed and hugged by the little girl just come down from 
the farm. 

The sun withdraws his rays; the many shadows are 
merged In one; 

The sweet odor of the white campion comes floating, and 
of the wild roses in neighboring hedgerows, and of the 
distant bean-fields; 

Twilight comes, and dusk comes, and the height of the 
sky lifts and lifts; 

The last of the long daylight fades : 

Over the fields and by the hedgerows and along the 
sprawling suburban streets of London the last of the long 
daylight fades: 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 73 

Over the roof of the high opera-house — late grey and 
ghostly in contrast with the myriad twinkling lamps below — 
by those within unthought of, it fades: 

Where — amid a blaze of light and color, elate, to her full 
height drawn, tier upon tier of faces, thousands of eyes 
confronting, and saturated with the excitement of the mo- 
ment, every vein in her beautiful body bounding — 

The prima donna lifts clear and unfaltering in the finale 
her splendid voice. 

And retires amid a storm of flowers. 

The sower goes out to sow, alone in the morning, the 
early October morning so beautiful and calm. 

The flanks of the clods are creeping with thin vapor, and 
the little copse alongside the field is full of white trailing 
veils of it; 

While now like a flood the rising yellow sunlight pours 
in, among the brambles and under the square oak-boughs, 
and splashes through in great streaks of light over the 
ploughed land. 

Beautiful is the morning. Alone over the field, to and 
fro, to and fro, with ample alternate hand-sweep he goes. 
At every step, right and left, the grain broadcast flies in a 
glittering shower. 

With the Sun and the Earth for companions, with 
browned arms and face and dazzle-lidded eyes, thick-booted, 
untiring, all day the sower goes sowing — 

What in due time shall become daily bread in the mouths 
of thousands. 



74 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The caravan has halted : it Is the hour of prayer, the tents 
are already pitched; 

On his carpet the old Sheikh kneels upright — his arms 
and eyes uplifted; above, the living blue breathless miracle 
bends — the sky! 

The others are round him with their faces buried In the 
sand ; the camels are tethered a few paces ofi. 

His voice ascends. By the doors of the tents from the 
scanty fires just lighted three columns of smoke, perfectly 
straight, also ascend. 

That Is all. The smoke creeps upward and Is lost con- 
tinually in the blue; his voice who prays creeps upward and 
Is lost. 

Around spreads, silent, with loose stones and a few weeds, 
the desert; above, the sky. 

The Sky! 



I arise and pass. 

After eighty years, having been once like the rest a little 
vacant-eyed child In his mother's arms; having thence lived 
and toiled and enjoyed much hither and thither over the 
earth ; Now being very weary, and day after day and week 
after week growing more and more weary; all all old in- 
terests refusing, for death longing — the old lawyer lies down 
to sleep. 

It is but for an hour or two. Death comes not yet. The 
leaves still tremble In the evening wind, the clouds In 
solemn transformation float on, voices of children call in the 
garden below. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 75 

The last few miles, the old familiar country — the well- 
known roads and garden-lands — yet no glance thereon. 

The strange immortal instinct pressing — the veiled figure 
always in front, beckoning. 

Now at this time the creatures of the forest to their lairs 
retiring await the approach of night; the great mountains 
stand in awe amid the hush of their own waters; twilight 
fades and the stars once more appear. 

Deep under dead leaves in the wood or buried In the 
earth, the baby fly, white and unformed — the two dark 
specks which will be its eyes just appearing — in its oak- 
spangled cradle sleeps. With their mother plaited in a ball 
of dry grass, warm and soft, the young fieldmice lie quiet, 
or chirrup nosing for their food. The pools of water are 
full of creatures that cannot rest; to the starlit surface 
rising they spread wings and fly forth into the fields of air. 
In heaven whirled by resistless tradition and necessity de- 
scending from God knows when, Jupiter the great planet 
swims — and swathes Itself wondrous In clouds — prophetic. 

Heaven bends above, the Earth opens disclosing Innu- 
merable births beneath. He lies weary, slumbering for a 
moment. The pen, the desk, the half-finished letter, are 
there; the gas makes a slight singing noise overhead. 

Solid walls and stones grow transparent and penetrable: 
the earth and all that Is In It fade and recede to make way 
for the Traveler. 

LI 

I arise and pass. 



76 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

An unfinished house standing at the edge of a field is 
burning — and the roof has caught first. 

One vast sheet of flame ascends spiral in the night, and 
casts Its glare upon thousands of faces In the street and fields 
below. 

Above, the dazzling v^hlte and red mixed v^Ith the greens 
and blue-greens of the burning metals ; and the great tw^Isted 
column of tawny smoke, with red sparkles flying on the 
wind. 

Lo! the strange light cast upon the wall of fuU-foliaged 
elms; and far more wonderful than all, at their feet, the 
crowd of living faces — 

The mad pushing sweating crowd, the flushed eager faces 
— dominated all, controlled and riveted by that flaming 
sign. 

Holy! holy! holy! 

Night and flame, night and flame, entering in! entering 
(O arched wonder of many eyes!) through the visible into 
the invisible — 

Holy! holy! holy! 

Night and flame entering in (and one with you, treading 
softly through the myriad marvelous chambers) — 

To dwell; to dwell for months, years; to transfuse, en- 
large, to touch with wonder, ardor, exultation ; to be re- 
membered afterwards, years and years perhaps, upon his 
bed, by that child there: the jets of flame through the roof, 
the strange wreathing smoke, the solemn dark of the sky, 
the bravery of the firemen, the thrill of the falling timbers; 
to mix with the yearnings of the growing lonely boy, to be a 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 77 

strange symbol burning In his heart; to fire the slumbering 
train (in some compressed girl-soul) of adventurous re- 
solve, to mingle with the fears of motherhood ; 

At last to merge and become indistinguishable — in each 
one of these to merge, night and flame! — leaving out not 
one. 

Holy! holy! holy! 

And lo! the crowd still standing. 

And now out of all two alone. 

By the curbstone, in the forefront of the crowd, a man — 
a navvy — vyath his hands clasped in front of him on the 
breast of his little son! 

The boy, timid, standing between his father's feet, press- 
ing back against his legs, with his own little hands the great 
hands clasping; 

The two, equal childlike, with parallel upward eyes by 
the flame riveted. 

Their rapt unconscious demeanor, the strong likeness 
between them. 

And the meanings, apart, which the wonderful roaring 
gesticulating flame in the night signifies secretly to each. 

LII 

I arise and pass. 

With struggles and strange exhausting birth-leapings, with 
long intervals of sleep, 

[When it is all over, with long long sweet sleep ;J 

With the unwashed wet of birth, of love, still upon me; 



78 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

With the clinging of the love of men and women, with 
the sweat of night-long companions, with the bruised sweet- 
ness of love; 

With sleep, sleep, with the wine of life and death, with 
kisses given and received, with the reaching of arms round 
neck and shoulder, and the answer of quiet eyes ; 

With nakedness unashamed, with divine comradeship, 
and laughter; with the enclosing shadow of Death, far lost 
in daring outposts on the verge of the Unknown; with sol- 
diership and armor unremitted, exultant; 

With childhood and the least trifle content; with eternal 
Nowness; with perfected Carelessness; with night, day, 
rain, sun, winter, summer, morning, evening, solitude, pain, 
pleasure, and the looking forth of innumerable faces ; 

With Chastity and Ascendancy; with invulnerability and 
superhuman power ; with Unchastity and Effusion ; with live 
clinging threads of love reaching down to the remotest 
time ; 

With the endless journey begun ; with trades by sea and 
land ; simple food, coarse clothing, common features ; with 
the breath of the common air, and the freemasonry of the 
old crafts all over the world ; 

Shaggy coat-shakings, revolts, rejections of accepted 
things, travels, disappearances, re-appearances, swoonings 
away, oblivions; arising again on earth, irresistible, to su- 
preme mastery, 

To Savagery and the wild woods, with unfettered step; 
to rocks and hanging branches; to the dens of the animals, 
to wind and sun, blowing shining through, and I through 
them, to evade and arise; 

With joy over the world, Democracy, born again, into 
heaven, over the mountain-peaks and the seas in the un- 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 79 

fathomable air, screaming, with shouts of joy, whirling the 
nations with her breath, into heaven arising and passing, 

I arise and pass — dreaming the dream of the soul's slow 
disentanglement. 

LIII 

Where you are: 

Where the firelight flickers about your room, and the 
wind moans in the window, and the railway whistle over 
suburban roofs sounds hollow through the night; 

Where you sit alone, and your thoughts spread making a 
great space about you ; 

Where you go forth at early morning with your bass of 
trusty tools, and your shadow shoots long before you down 
the frosty sparkling road — where you return at evening 
weary and out of humor with your life, 

I dream the dream. 

Where you open your eyes upon the world, and the 
beauty of it Is upon you like the touch of beloved fingers ; 

Where the still flame burns In your soul, hidden away 
from the lightest breath of curious man; where the fire of 
consecration burns; 

Yet the world closes In at last, and the lamp grows dim, 
and you lie like one half dead — of the bitter wounds of the 
faces of men and the taunts of existence; 

I dream the dream : I dream the dream of the soul's slow 
disentanglement. 

WTiere you bend ankle-deep In mud all day In the rice 
plantations for a few half-pence; and the sun sails on — 
slowj slow — over the steamy land; 



8o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Where you walk following the old employ, shepherding 
sheep In the sweet crisp air of the high lands; 

Where you stand pale and worn-eyed in the gloomy 
North amid the hot smell of machinery and the wicked 
scream of wheels; where you stand adjusting the threads, 
making the same answering movement of the hand for the 
millionth time; 

Where you He wedged In under a coal seam, working by 
the light of a tallow dip stuck In clay; or grind scythes all 
day, bending over, or race your wheel with the racing steel ; 

Where you sit high up on the fragrant mountains of 
Ceylon, with a great flood of moonlight at your feet, lean- 
ing your soul out from the verandah to the slow lifting and 
floating of palm-fronds in the exquisite breeze; and mem- 
orles come trooping back upon you like the clouds of small 
yellow butterflies that along your coasts — between the sand 
and the sea — beat annually up against the wind ; 

Where you recline by your camp-fire in the African wild, 
watching the moonlight dances of the natives — the fantastic 
leaps of the dancer, the rhythmical hand-clapping of the 
spectators ; 

Where you drop down the river in the sun, past the 
dreaded mud-banks and wildernesses of mangroves; 

I dream the dream. 



LIV 

Where you sit in your armchair by the hearth, sleeping 
long and long; where you wake to look back upon your 
life lying hushed below you — like one who looks back from 
the summit of a mountain; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 8i 

And the children that came to you in the morning have 
gone from you at evening dusk, 

And the lesson of unfulfilled longing is yours, and of 
the inflow of immortality; 

Where they go out over the earth, where the children of 
the universal mother go ; and the wind carries them over 
the sea, blowing them into all lands; where they flow 
through the straits and narrows and over the great oceans 
of the earth, dwelling for nights together among the white 
leaping crests under the stars; 

Where strange faces meet, under other-slanting suns, 
amid new scenes and colors ; 

Where light encounters dark, and in their meeting glance 
lie new social ideals and civilisations slumbering; 

Where the mother of them all sits dreaming; 

Where the young poet peers in by moonlight through 
the bars of the tomb of Dante, and turns away with a silent 
prayer; 

Where the artist with easel and palette sits swathed In 
coats upon a hillside watching the untroubled dawn ; 

Where the old Hindu feeling the approach of death 
leaves his family and retires to a hut in the jungle, there 
to spend his last days In prayer and solitude ; 

Where royalty dwells lonely In spacious chambers, or 
moves along corridors past scarlet-coated footmen ; 

Where young and old at eventide in the dreamy flicker 
of firelight sit silent, or go away wandering in thought after 
the brother, the son, and lover of their dreams, following 
quickly softly with each and kissing the sacred footsteps 
through the dark; 

Where the young mother prays for hours bending over 



82 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the face of her sleeping child ; where the young man dreams 
all night of the face of his new-found friend and the kisses 
of his lips. 

Where the river glides down by night past the great city 
broadening to the sea; 

I dream the dream. 

The wind blows up fresh and cold where the waves are 
slapping against the jetty; red and green lights skim rap- 
idly over the water; 

The cold light of the half moon stands overhead, break- 
ing its way through combed fleece clouds, the horizon 
stretches misty white like the edge of an ice-bound sea; 

The moon pushes her way for a moment through the 
clouds, to look down upon the stilled scene of human toil 
and suifering; the wind blows up keen against those who 
still linger on the jetty; 

Keenly it blows away over the waste sea, and wraps 
itself round a thousand solitary watchers of the deep. 

On the wind I ride. 

And dream the dream of the soul's slow disentanglement. 

LV 

I have passed away and entered the gate of heaven. I 
am absolved from all torment. All is well to me. 

A tiny infant am I once more, leaning out from my 
mother's arms as one leans from a balcony. But the world 
hangs flat before me like a painted curtain : the sun and 
the moon and men's faces are all alike. This is my dream. 
The sound of music comes calling to me, calling, calling. 
•Listening I lean forward with open mouth and far-distant 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 83 

gaze, and am profoundly still. [Let who looks upon me 
see with his own eyes my dark soul's myriad re-awakening.] 

I am a wild cat crouching at night in the angle of a 
bough. I am Arjuna reasoning on the battle-field with 
Krishna — learning the lessons of divine knowledge. I am 
a teacher scanning the faces of those who sit opposite to 
me. All is well. 

I labor all day in the drizzle with pick and shovel; the 
smell of fire I strike from the rock pleases me; I return 
home tired and wet in the early dusk to my tea. 

I am one of a rustic party of actors; in the old farm- 
parlor we rehearse our parts, with shouts of laughter. I 
go into the cowshed last thing at night with my lantern to 
see that all is well. 

I am a shepherd on the breezy hills; the wholesome aro- 
matic odors of the grass transfuse me; my sheep graze on 
and on through the noonday; I lie in the sun and think and 
speak of little beside ewes and tups. 

I stand in the chamber of Death and gaze upon the 
swathed larval form — the solid world recedes around it; 
through the just open window come the cries of hawkers and 
the creak of cart-wheels. 

I laugh and chat with the other girls and women in the 
edge-tool warehouse ; I run home in the evening to my old 
mother and to prepare the dinners for next day. 

The din of the riveting shop goes on round me; I hate 
the bully red-faced master coming on his rounds — with his 
insulting voice — and answer him not: murderous thoughts 
haunt my mind. 

I plot with others to murder the captain on board ship. 
I am satisfied with the deed and experience no remorse. It 



84 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

is off the coast of China. I go ashore afterwards and spend 
the night at a sing-song shop. 

All is well. The least action as well as the greatest. 
The beautiful and the deformed are alike beautiful. I am 
happy now and not to-morrow, and am absolved from mo- 
tives. 

On the northern-most point of Australia, decent in my 
single cowry-shell, I stand. The white man comes ashore 
in his boat from the great ship, and gives me some old 
hoop-iron, and I give him a few wooden lances in return. 

I am a long-eyed Japanee. In the shadow of the sacred 
thicket I lie — where the great seated image of Buddha 
(hollow within for a shrine) breaks above me against the 
blue sky. The sharp shadows lie under his sleepy lids and 
soft mouth smiling inwardly. I see on his forehead the 
sacred spot, and from between his feet the emblematic lotus 
springing. 

[All is well] 

In the shadow of the thicket I lie spreading my fevered 
limbs to the cool breeze, bruising their unslaked passion 
against the stony earth — in the cool shadow I lie and gaze 
at his face I know so well, and through the immortal calm 
of it the spirit of the Holy One steals upon me; the fever 
of life departs. 

I stand near the door of my cottage, busy with the week's 
washing, thinking of my husband; in the doorway to and 
fro my baby swings in the little sea he has made; petulant 
soft wafts of spring air steal in, this warm February morn- 
ing. I am very happy. 

I am very happy. By the door of my own little house 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 85 

at last I stand entranced. I look out upon the world and 
know not which way to go. 

O world you have been very gentle to me! Strangely 
as to the dead your beauty comes to me now. Little house 
where I have lived so long, I thank you too: I know well 
that you are different from what you appear. 

Disembodied I cry, I cry, over the earth — I shake the 
sleepers in their tombs with unutterable joy: 

arise! O air and elements break forth into singing! 
Great sea washing the shores of earth ! O earth of count- 
less tombs ! the hour of your disclosure Is at hand ; the 
bounds of mortality at length are past! 

1 arise and pass once more: I travel forth Into all lands: 
nothing detains me any longer. By the ever beautiful 
coast line of human life, in all climates and countries, wan- 
dering on, a stranger, unwearied, I meet the old faces: I 
come never away from home. 

I lift the latch of the cottage door, and the place I love 
is laid for me for supper; I depart, yet never to depart 
again. 

Laws and limitations fade, time and distance are no 
more, no bars can hold me, no chamber shut me in : on 
those that bear me to the grave I descend in peace. 

The arched doors of the eyebrows of Innumerable multi- 
tudes open around me: new heavens I see, and the earth 
made new because of them. 

I will stop here then. I will not leave the earth after all. 
I am content and need go no farther. 

And was this, O love, the cause of your so long aching? 



86 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

That you might have the adit, that you might enter in 
at last and be at rest? 



LVI 



SLOWLY on You, too, the meanings: the light-sparkles 
on water, tufts of weed in winter — the least things — 
dandelion and groundsel. 

Have you seen the wild bees' nest in the field, the cells, 
the grubs, the transparent white baby-bees, turning brown, 
hairy, the young bees beginning to fly, raking the moss 
down over the disturbed cells? the parasites? 

Have you seen the face of your brother or sister? have 
you seen the little robin hopping and peering under the 
bushes? have you seen the sun rise, or set? I do not know 
— I do not think that I have. 

When your unquiet brain has ceased to spin its cobwebs 
over the calm and miraculous beauty of the world ; 

When the Air and the Sunlight shall have penetrated 
your body through and through ; and the Earth and Sea 
have become part of it; 

When at last, like a sheath long concealing the swelling 
green shoot, the love of learning and the regard for elab- 
orate art, wit, manners, dress, or any thing rare or costly 
whatever, shall drop clean off from you; 

When your Body — for to this it must inevitably return — 
is become shining and transparent before you in every part 
(however deformed) ; 

Then (O blessed One!) these things also transparent 
possibly shall surrender themselves — the least thing shall 
speak to you words of deliverance. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 87 

The stones are anywhere and everywhere : the temple roof 
is the sky. 

The materials are the kettle boiling on the fire, the bread 
in the oven, the washing dolly, the axe, the gravelock — the 
product is God ; 

And the little kitchen where you live, the shelves, the 
pewter, the nightly lamp, the fingers and faces of your chil- 
dren — a finished and beautiful Transparency of your own 
Body. 

LVII' 

I saw the cow give birth to her first-born calf; I saw 
the beautiful helpless creature laid under her nose ; I saw 
the calm woman who sprinkled the young thing with meal 
and tended the exhausted mother. 

I see the many women who manage cattle well, and 
gardens, and understand the breeding of sheep ; 

I see the noble and natural women of all the Earth ; I 
see their well-formed feet and fearless ample stride, their 
supple strong frames, and attitudes well-braced and beau- 
tiful ; 

On those that are with them long Love and Wisdom de- 
scend ; everything that is near them seems to be in its place ; 
they do not pass by little things nor are afraid of big things ; 
but they love the open air and the sight of the sky in the 
early morning. 

Blessed of such women are the children : and blessed are 
they in childbirth. The open air and the sun and the moon 
and the running streams they love all the more passionately 
for the sake of that which lies sleeping within them. 



88 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

LVIII 

Recurved and close He the little feet and hands, close as 
in the attitude of sleep folds the head, the little lips are 
hardly parted; 

The living mother-flesh folds round in darkness, the 
mother's life is an unspoken prayer, her body a temple of 
the Holy One. ^ 

I am amazed and troubled, my child, she whispers — at 
the thought of you; I hardly dare to speak of it, you are 
so sacred ; 

When I feel you leap I do not know myself any more — 
I am filled with wonder and joy — Ah! if any injury should 
happen to you! 

I will keep my body pure, very pure; the sweet air will 
I breathe and pure water drink ; I will stay out in the open, 
hours together, that my flesh may become pure and fragrant 
for your sake; 

Holy thoughts will I think; I will brood in the thought 
of mother-love. I will fill myself with beauty: trees and 
running brooks shall be my companions; 

And I will pray that I may become transparent — that the 
sun may shine and the moon, my beloved, upon you, 

Even before you are bom. 

LIX 

Out of Night and Nothingness a Body appears. 

The threads of a thousand past ages run together in it; 
out of its loins and the look of it? eyes a thousand ages part 
their way into the future. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 89 

Eyes out of which I see, Ears through which I hear — 
formed in my mother's womb in silence; 

Mother of mine, walking the earth no more (to me 
closer than ever), out of all tears, suffusing light over the 
world, equal with God — for whose sake Night and Day 
evermore are sacred ; 

Body, by which I ascend and know Myself — Mysteries 
of life and death slowly parting and transforming around 
me: 

O glad, not for one year or two but for how many thou- 
sands, I out of deep and infinite Peace salute you. 

The doctor does not give Health, but the winds of 
heaven ; 

Happiness does not proceed by chance, nor is got by sup- 
plication, but is inevitable wherever the Master is. 

Doubt parts aside. I hear grown and bearded men 
shouting in the woods for joy, shouting singing with the 
birds; I hear the immense chorus over all the world, of 
the Return to Joy. 

Come, my friend, in the still autumn morning, while the 
sun is yet low upon the hills, among the dead leaves come 
walk with me. 

Those and the like of those that have been my compan- 
ions are with You also, and shall be to all time. I give 
you but a hint and a word of commendation. I open a 
door outwards. 

The gentle and stormy winds, the clouds sailing in 
heaven; the plough-stilts, the boat-tiller; sitting at dinner 
with the winter sun looking in at the open door, natural 
men and women (common as unquarried rock) around 



90 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

you; love, granted or not granted; the companionship of 
the dead; 

The savage eternal peaks, the solitary signals — ^Walt 
Whitman, Jesus of Nazareth, your own Self distantly de- 
riding you — 

These are always with you. 

Have you doubted? — It is well. But now you shall for- 
get your doubts. 

Have you suffered? — It is good to suffer; but soon you 
shall suffer no longer. 

Have you looked at the sky and the earth and the long 
busy streets and thought them dead of all poetry and 
beauty? — It is you have been ill, nigh to death; but be at 
peace: life shall surely return to you. 

I have seen your struggles, your long wakeful nights; I 
have sat by you. I have heard the voice which calls you. 
Come with me. Here is Rest, here is Peace I give you. 
A little while by the edge of this wood sitting, I with You ; 
then to depart; yet never to depart again. 

Words unspoken, yet wafted over all lands, through all 
times, eternal ; no more mine than yours — I give them again 
to the wide embracing Air. 

Haply a little breath for you to breathe — to enter, 
scarcely perceived, into your body — a little time to dwell, 
transforming, within you. 

Haply mementos, indications, broken halves of ancient 
changeless Symbols, eternal possessions, treasures incor- 
ruptible. 

Of Love which changes not — to be duly presented again — 
the broken halves to be joined. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 91 

I a child sitting at your feet, content — the odor of dead 
leaves all around ; or walking with you, your comrade, 
through the night (often we lean and touch each other's 
lips as we go) ; or very old, and near and dear to Death: 

Are you sure you know me when you look upon me? 

Behold a mystery! — these eyes, these lips, this hair, these 
loins — see you me in them, you shall see me where they 
are not. 

Long looking, the face of the world shall change — surely 
by the edge of the little wood I will come and sit with you. 

All riches promised, and far more, I give to you. 

Have you used the Summer well, then the Winter shall 
be beautiful to you. Have you made good use of Life, then 
Death shall be exceeding glorious. 

All this day we will go together ; the sun shall circle over- 
head ; our shadows swing round us on the road ; the winter 
sunshine shall float wonderful promises to us from the 
hills ; the evening see us In another land ; 

The night ever insatiate of love we will sleep together, 
and rise early and go forward again in the morning; 

Wherever the road shall lead us, in solitary places or 
among the crowd, it shall be well; we sJiall not desire to 
come to the end of the journey, nor consider what the end 
may be: the end of all things shall be with Us. 

LX 

This is my trade; teach me yours and I will teach you 
mine. 

Are you a carpenter, a mason, a grower of herbs and 
flowers, a breaker of horses? a wheel-wrlght, boat-builder, 



92 ^ TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

engine-tenter, dockyard-laborer? do you take In washing or 
sewing, do you rock the youngest in the cradle with your 
foot while you knit stockings for the elder ones? It is well 
— Weaning yourself from external results learn the true 
purposes of things. 

Wherever the sea and the land are, is my trade, and 
it has been know^n since the eldest Time: the ancient Mys- 
teries and Oracles hinted at it, the venerable sages of India 
knew it, and men and women who walked this earth before 
all history; in the remotest stars it is exactly the same as 
here, and in all the circles of intelligences whether they 
dwell in fire or water or in the midst of wiiat is solid, or 
in the thinnest vacuum. 

Many an old woman sitting by her cottage door is far 
more profoundly versed in it than I am. Many a fisher- 
man pouncing on crabs along the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean has in it long ago served his apprenticeship. If you 
think or desire by coming with me to know more or be 
better than these, you mistake me and what I have to tell 
you. 

Learning and superiority are of no use in the face of all 
this: they depart much as they came. But to come near to 
understanding the use of materials is divine, and he that 
has never despised a weaker or more ignorant than himself 
is nearest to this. 

Many are the roads, but there is one end to which they 
all lead, there are many profitable trades, but there is one 
whose profits are past all reckoning. 

LXI 

Hand in hand for an hour I sit with you in the Great 
Garden of Time. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 93 

Equals We, possessors and enjoyers, ask no more than 
si«iply to be. This hour, equal of all others that were or 
shall be, itself perfect: the other hours as they come or go, 
perfect. 

Meeting once, to meet often and often again (is not the 
whole garden ours?), we shall not forget, we will not 
hasten or delay. 

From this day it is not so much we that change, as the 
hours that glide past us; each bends low as it passes with a 
gift. 

Earth-kings on their thrones faintly fore-shadowed this; 
the old myths and legends of heaven were the indistinct 
dreams of the everlasting peace of the soul. 

LXII 

And you too, ye hours of suffering and warfare, grim 
unrest, we confront, each perfect; we contain you; storms 
and darkness surging around, we have seen round you. 

Hours of pain and darkness within, evil conscience and 
heavy burdens of concealment! hours of black and obstinate 
desire, eyes turning aswerve, trembling guilty tongue — hun- 
gry mortal hours! caught in the cleave of your jaws, I deny 
you not. 

Far from it: I welcome you. You are my friends as 
good as any, I give you equal places with the rest, if not 
better — for what indeed should I understand if you had not 
taught me? 

Each beautiful, countless myriads to be knowti, 

Over the hills and green plains of Eternity pasturing, for 



94 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

ever widening — mortal, immortal, swift-footed, slow-footed 
— O ye Hours and Desires, you are all mine! 

My herd, my beauties! my glossy, supple, with arched 
necks, my gentle and caressing, my wild, fierce, passionate — 
divine, satanIc — there is room, and plenty, for you all! 

O beautiful creatures! not because sometimes you show 
your teeth at each other will I disown you; not if you 
should all turn upon one to rend him, will I cast that one 
out — never so black or ungainly be he. 

Avaunt! Over the hills with lightning speed fly, tossing 
your nostrils: but know that I easily outspeed you all — 
you cannot delude or escape Me. 

Wild herd! begetting and begetting innumerable progeny 
(all mine), 

See If to my chariot at length harnessed I will not drive 
you, irresistible and triumphant, through all the kingdoms 
of Space. 

LXIII 

Beautiful is the winter by the sea; the gray waves come 
rolling with locks tossed back by the North wind. 

In his hut on the beach the fisherman cooks his dinner; 
the clock that belongs in the herring-boat ticks against the 
wall ; the drift-nets are mended ; the boat is overhauled and 
repaired, the boat-lanterns and the pump are painted. 

Out on the great deep the balance and plunge goes on ; 
the sail steadies in the wind ; the land and well-known 
points fade; the circle of water completes itself. 

Beautiful is the winter inland; the wind and wild clouds 
with rain rush over the world; the valleys are full of the 
sound of streams. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 95 

The farmer cleans out his ditches and drains, and mends 
the foot-paths across his fields; the turnip-pit is completed; 
and the apples and potatoes are picked over in the store- 
room. 

The snow descends upon the young blade of corn ; the 
soft-fingered flakes wrap all the world in white; frost seals 
the earth in silence. 

He stands by the door of the house-place at night; the 
moon leans out, and the stars and the great planets from 
heaven ; Orion hunts with his dogs. In the morning the 
field-fares and starlings go by in flights. 

Do I ask of you perfections? do you think that Winter is 
perhaps less perfect than Summer? or that there is not 
perfection everywhere, where the soul casts its light? 

Be not careful about perfections: I declare to you the 
day shall come when everything shall be perfect to you. 

To be ungainly or deformed shall after all be no hin- 
drance, your ignorance and rags shall not avail for a dis- 
guise; 

Past your own futility and vanity you shall walk unfet- 
tered, and just gaze upon them as you go by; if learning 
and skill admit you to wonders, ignorance and awkwardness 
shall give you entrances equally or more desirable. 

Take care (I have warned you before) how you touch 
these words: with curious intellect come not near, lest I 
utterly destroy you; but come with bold heart and true and 
careless, and they shall bless you beyond imagination. 

I do not turn you back from self-seeking; on the con- 
trary I know that you shall never rest till you have found 
your Self; 

If you seek it in money, fame, and the idle gratification 



96 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

of inordinate organs and bumps — that is all very well for a 
time; but you will have to do better than that. 

If you seek it in Duty, Goodness, Renunciation, they also 
are very well for a time ; but you will do better. 

LXIV 

Beautiful is the figure of the lusty full-grown groom on 
his superb horse: the skin of the animal is saturated with 
love. 

Radiant health ! 

O kisses of sun and wind, tall fir-trees and moss-covered 
rocks! O boundless joy of Nature on the mountain tops — 
coming back at last to you! 

Wild songs in sight of the sea, wild dances along the 
^ands, glances of the risen moon, echoes of old old refrains 
coming down from unimagined times! 

O rolling through the air superb prophetic spirit of Man, 
pulse of divine health equalising the universe, vast over all 
the world expanding spirit! 

O joy of the liberated soul (finished purpose and acquit- 
tal of civilisation), daring all things — light step, life held in 
the palm of the hand! O swift and eager delight of bat- 
tle, fierce passion of love destroying and destroying the body ! 

Eternal and glorious War ! Liberation ! the soul like an 
eagle — from gaping wounds and death — rushing forth 
screaming into its vast and eternal heaven. 

See! the divine mother goes forth with her babe (all 
creation circles round) — God dwells once more in a woman's 
womb; friend goes with friend, flesh cleaves to flesh, the 
path that rounds the universe. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 97 

O every day sweet and delicious food! Kisses to the 
lips of sweet-smelling fruit and bread, milk and green herbs. 
Strong well-knit muscles, quick-healing glossy skin, body 
for kisses all over! 

Radiant health! to breathe, O joy! to sleep, ah! never 
enough to be expressed! 

For the taste of fruit ripening warm in the sun, for the 
distant sight of the deep liquid sea! 

For the sight of the naked bodies of the bathers, bathing 
by the hot sea-banks, the pleasant consciousness of those who 
are unashamed, the glance of their eyes; the beautiful proud 
step of the human animal on the sand ; 

For the touch of the air on my face or creeping over my 
unclothed body, for the rustling sound of it in the trees, 
and the appearance of their tall stems springing so lightly 
from the earth! 

Joy, joy and thanks for ever. 

LXV 

For the face of the farm-lad who came and sat beside me, 
the handfuls of pease that he offered me — for the taste of 
their juicy sweet pods ; 

The pressure of the Earth against me as I lay on it, the 
light sense riding on it of tremendous forces charioting me 
onward; for the like sense in my will and actions, of being 
borne along! 

O the splendid wind careering over earth and ocean, 
the sun darting between the great white clouds! O the 
lifting of arms to Nature — heaven wrapped around one's 
body! 

The unflagging pleasure of food, the crisp and toothsome 



98 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

growths of the soil! draughts of running water in summer; 

The evenings by the fire in winter, the ease after labor, 
the steady sleepy heat, the sleepy flicker on the wall, the 
presence of others in the room ; for the voices of children ; 

For the beautiful faces — and ever more beautiful appear- 
ing — of those I meet in the doorway or at meals, the mortal 
father mother sister brother faces; 

For the glorified face of him I love: the long days out 
alone together in the woods, the nights superb of comrade- 
ship and love. 

O joy returning morn noon and night! day-long as In a 
dream walking over earth enchanted, waking deep midnight 
out of sleep in the ocean of joy! [Lo! the beautiful sur- 
face, the rippling of waves, the moon shining down.] 

Deep deep draughts of all that life can give, drawn in to 
feed the flame — 

Joy, joy and thanks for ever. 

[O burning behind all worlds, immortal Essences, Flames 
of this ever-consuming universe, never-consumed — to laugh 
and laugh with you, and of our laughter 

Shake forth creation!] 

Wonderful! wave after wave; clouds, rain, wind, day 
and night; 

The sea by night in storms, and the morning over the 
hills, for grief and joy, for solitude and companionship ; for 
the birth of babes and the putting away of the husks of the 
feeble and aged in the ground ; 

For the great processions of the seasons over the Earth, 
and the dead lying below; and the dead rising again in the 
pure translucent air to begin a new existence, with unut- 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 99 

terable joy bursting outwards from them beyond all mortal 
bounds — 

With shouts and paeans Into the blue aether of God — 

Joy, joy and thanks for ever. 

And for the strange individual decree of each one, 

The daily hunger and thirst after sympathy, ever-new, 
for the pleasant putting-forth of affection, and for the ex- 
cess — for prostrate unspeakable love! 

For the pleasant moods of the soul, for the finite mas- 
terly enjoyment of the world; and for the painful moods, 
for the vicious agony and the vast dark after-death of desire 
— for the transcendent pouring and pouring of the soul out 
into other worlds! 

For the tragic moments of life, and for the long same 
stretches of the commonplace; 

For the wonderful looming rise upon one of the great 
Arch of Death as one approaches it, for the dim perception 
of the infinite stretches beyond ! 

For the final deep abiding sense of rest — in Thee; 

For the touch of Thyself growing continually out of 
everything more actual, starlike, perfect; 

And for all experience; 

Joy, joy and thanks for ever. 

LXVI 

O the sound of trumpets, the wild clangor of wings! 
forging aloft into the air! O Freedom for men! 

Sounds of innumerable voices singing! Starry lamps 
twinkling to each other across the huge concave of Time ! 

Dread Creators of the flying earth through space! 



loo TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Travelers yourselves upon It! Fliers through all forms! 
Enduers of all disguises! 

In your hut by the sea shore looking back upon the 
myriad constellations M^hence you descended! In the eyes 
of her you love, In the faithful face of your enemy in bat- 
tle, aware at last of the drift of Creation! 

joy! joy! inextinguishable joy and laughter! 

Lo! the Conscience, the tender green shoot in each one, 
growing, arising, Ygdrasil casting its leaves, elements and 
nations, over the universe! 

Lo! the Moral laws so long swathing the soul, loosing, 
parting at last for the liberation of that which they pre- 
pared. 

Lo! Death in majesty appearing, tender and beautiful, 
walking on earth the floor of heaven, through the night, 
through the long transparent night singing singing — 

In her arms the children of all creation, all creatures 
of the field and the children of men, nursing, 

In their ears singing low, singing soft, the song — the in- 
terpreting song — that the darting sun sings, and the maiden 
by her window, the song of the leaping waters and of love — 

And of joy, of Inconceivable joy, O ecstasy! thrilling every 
object of thought. 

LXVII 

1 hear the electric thunderbolt strike the earth. It shiv- 
ers and It staggers In its orbit. 

Leap, children of men, arise! Set your faces dead as 
flint. For great is the prize before you. 

The hour has struck! the Masters appear! Back, O ele- 
ments and destiny! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY loi 

From this hour, War! ever more splendid and glorious 
War! the long tradition of the Earth! 

The flame of the Soul, burning through all materials! 

Long the battle, clouds of dust hiding heaven. Earth 
trembles like a startled horse. 

They that fight descend, radiant with eternal lightnings. 
The gods blaze forth upon each other. 

The flags fly of all nations up and down. The long 
result of history, and penetrating and preceding all history, 
completes Itself. 

Lo, Freedom! haughty, magnificent, moving like a dream 
before the half-awakened eyes of men — never faithless to 
her, never at last one faithless. 

LXVIII 

And so I heard a voice say What Is Freedom? 

I have heard (it said) the lions roaring In their dens; 
I have seen the polyp stretching Its arms upward from the 
floor of the deep; 

I have heard the cries of slaves and the rattling of their 
chains, and the hoarse shout of victims rising against their 
oppressors; I have seen the deliverers dying calmly on the 
scaffold. 

I have heard of the centuries-long struggle of nations for 
constitutional liberty — the step-by-step slowly-won ap- 
proaches as to some inner and Impregnable fastness; 

I know the wars that have been waged, the flags flying 
to and fro over the earth. I know that one tyranny has 
been substituted for another, and that the forms of oppres- 
sion have changed: 

But what is Freedom? 



I02 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Villeins and thralls become piece-men and day-tal men, 
and the bondsmen of the land become the bondsmen of Ma- 
chinery and Capital ; the escaped convicts of Labor fit 
admiringly the bracelets of Wealth round their own 
wrists. 

I have seen the slaves of Opinion and Fashion, of Igno- 
rance and of Learning, of Drink and Lust, of Chastity and 
Unchastity : 

One skin cast leaves another behind, and that another, 
and that yet another; 

I have seen over the world the daily fear of Death and 
Hell, of Pain and momentary overhanging Chance; 

I have seen recluses craning their lives up into impossible 
heavens, thinkers hopelessly meditating after philosophic 
Truth, incurables lying covered with bed-sores, household 
drudges running from the hearth to the slopstone and from 
the slopstone to the hearth all their lives; 

Something of all these slaveries I know — they are very 
well in their way — 

But what is Freedom? 

And I heard (in the height) another voice say: 

I AM. 

In the recluse, the thinker, the incurable and the drudge, 
I AM. I am the giver of Life, I am Happiness. 

I am in the good and evil, in the fortunate and the 
unfortunate, in the gifted and the incapable, alike; I am 
not one more than the other. 

The lion roaring in its den, and the polyp on the floor 
of the deep, the great deep itself, know ME. 

The long advances of history, the lives of men and 
women — the men that scratched the reindeer and mammoth 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 103 

on bits of bone, the Bushmen painting their rude rock- 
paintings, the mud-hovels clustering round mediaeval castles, 
the wise and kindly Arab with his loving boy-attendants, 
the Swiss mountain-herdsman, the Russian patriot, the Eng- 
lish mechanic, 

Know ME. I am Happiness in them, in all — underly- 
ing. I am the Master, showing myself from time to time 
as occasion serves. 

I am not nearer to one than the other; they do not seek 
me so much as I advance through them. 

Out of all would YOU emerge? 

Would you at last, O child of mine, after many toils and 
endless warfare (for without such all is in vain) emerge 
and become MY EQUAL? 

[Wonderful, wonderful is this that I tell you! Would 
you too become a Master — when you have seen and known 
all slaveries, and have ceased to put one before the other?] 

Would you, whom I have often silently been with, to 
whom in the early morning I have come kissing you on the 
lips to leave Happiness for your waking, whom I have 
taught long and long my own ways, even for this — become 
my Equal? Would you look me at last in the face? 

It shall be then. The way is long but the centuries are 
long. Faint not. Does my voice sound distant? Faint 
not. 

Even now for a moment round your neck, advancing, I 
stretch my arms; to my lips I draw you, I press upon your 
lips the seal of a covenant that cannot be forgotten. 



I04 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

LXIX 

— ^WHO write — translate for you these thoughts: I 
wipe a mirror and place it in your hands [look long, O 
friend, look long, satiate yourself] — 

I bring you to your own, to take, or leave for a while, as 
pleases you best. I have perfect faith in you. 

And can wait; the whole of Time is before me. 

LXX 

The little red stars appear once more shining among the 
hazel catkins; the pewit tumbles and cries as at the first 
day, the year begins again, 

The wind blows east, the wind blows west, the old circle 
of days and nights completes itself; 

But henceforth the least thing shall speak to you words 
of deliverance; the commonest shall please you best; 

And the fall of a leaf through the air and the greeting 
of one that passes on the road shall be more to you than 
the wisdom of all the books ever written — and of this book. 



Part II 
CHILDREN OF FREEDOM 



O Freedom, beautiful beyond compare, thy kingdom is 
established/ 

Thou with thy feet on earth, thy brow among the stars, 
for ages us thy children 

I, thy child, singing daylong nightlong, sing of joy in 
thee. 



io6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



York Minster 

SOLID and ghostly in the pale winter morning — 
Thy vast floor worn, worn by the tiny foot-falls 
of centuries, 

The great grey Alps, thy columns, cutting sharply their 
strong lines against the delicate tracery of roof and win- 
dow — 

Solid and ghostly, in visionary beauty thou stretchest O 
nave, 

All desolate — vast and desolate. 

The murmurs of the outer world tremble faintly along 
the roof like the murmur of the sea in some vast sea-shell; 

Below, nothing visible moves save one ancient verger, 
pacing to and fro or drowsing in his armchair by the stove. 

But hark now ; from behind the screen the droning mum- 
ble of morning prayers! 

It ceases, and the thin boy-voices of the scanty choir take 
up the chant. 

Strangely from its Invisible source, like some river once 
running strong but now losing itself In runlets in the sand, 

As from out the old mediaeval world, faint and far comes 
sounding that refrain — 

The quaint barbaric tentative uncertain-toned Gregoric 
refrain, soaring. 

Soaring, soaring, through the great desolate nave wan- 
dering, In the ears of the one drowsy verger dying. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 107 

And all around over the world spreads winter, 
Heavy and silent; 

There is no music heard in the streets, nor sound of hope 
or of pleasuring — but pinched faces are there, 

And in wretched homes reign cold and starvation. 

The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Silence 
and heavy misery spread their wings dull against the faces of 
the people. The Church is dead. 

All the long years of Christianity have come to this; 

All the preaching and the prayers and the psalm-singing of 
centuries have come to this; 

All the rapt outpourings of the soul to God, and hidden 
yearnings of ages, to this? 

The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Snug in 
their firelit homes, with closed shutters and surrounded by 
every luxury, the Wealthy the Pious and the Respectable 
sit — 

And without, the People are dying of cold and starva- 
tion. 

A nation is dying — 

Dying slowly and surely of Unbelief — and there can be 
no deadlier disease: no plague of the middle ages, no chol- 
era epidemic, deadlier. 

A nation is dying — 

Rotting down piece-meal, lethargic even in its misery, 
weary and careworn even in its luxury, to the grave. 



io8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And I sit and sing. 

All the dark winter night, and though the night were 
ten times pitchier than it is, 

I sit and sing. 

Though the gloom spread all around me, though the wan 
pinched faces plead terribly upon me, in the midst still I sit 
and sing : Joy ! Joy ! — for I have seen ; 

Deep in the wide wan eyes I have seen: 

And what I have seen — is sufficient. 

what lies deeper far than the life and death of na- 
tions — 

As the calm Ocean lies deep below the storms which vex 
its surface; 

What all the ages and ages of human life on earth has 
never never failed; 

What is to humanity as the sun rising in the morning 
is to nature — 

Ever fresh and young and potent, creating new worlds 
for itself as it were by merely looking forth upon them; 

What rises winged out of all graves — ^with laughter — 
leaving the long vistas of corpses behind; and out of the 
graves of nations; 

What for each man rises out of his own grave, and is 
never vanquished; 

Deep deep — below all words — in the eyes of these wan 
children, 

1 have seen — and that is sufficient. 

O the fresh fresh air blowing ! 

Here on the summit of this leafless poplar, under the im- 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 109 

mense night, while the tender growing light just outlines 
the distant hills, 

To sit and sing — for pure joy simply to sit and sing! 



Sunday Morning after Church 

SUNDAY morning just after church — and a light warm 
wind from the North flutters laden with the scent of 
hay out to sea ; 

The sea lies crisp and calm, slate-green, stretching itself 
miles and miles to the wind — wonderful, ecstatic, pushing 
back with liquid-velvet paws upon the shore. 

On the sea-side esplanade there is a good-sized crowd — 
perhaps a thousand grown men and women walking up and 
down on one exclusive and fashionable stretch of grass. 

It is quite a sight. Scarlet parasols and blue and white 
lined with pink, tall hats shining speckless, kid-gloves reach- 
ing to the elbow — with glitter of gold and silver bangles, 
and soft sheen and rustle of dresses. All subdued and po- 
lite, colors carefully chosen, voices low, movements measured. 

Let us take a seat here. How pleasant the air is! and the 
shade of the great clouds! and the dazzling effect of so 
many going to and fro! 

Here comes one — her face not very easy to be seen for 
her parasol — but her chin is softly rounded, and the tinge 
and tissue of her skin most delicate. She wears a very light 
salmon-pink silk slashed with blue. She is with her mother 
and an elder sister, and seems to be doing her best, gentle 
child, to be the correct thing. 

Here another of bolder sort — dark handsome eyes, just 
flashing often enough to keep him amused on the man who 



no TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

is walking beside her; lips a trifle too red, but contrasting 
well with the great yellow rose on her shoulder and the violet 
velveteen tunic ; figure admirable, but her face somewhat 
wan beneath its petulance and Inquisitiveness. 

There goes an old beau, carefully brushed grizzled "hair, 
faultless boots — knows everybody, a good-natured and amus- 
ing crony; here a grey-haired baronet and his wife, both 
demure and short-sighted (no question but they have been 
to church) ; there again, a few steps to the left, three young 
men arm in arm, carefully got up, exchanging whispered 
comments. 

Hist! this elderly matron and her daughter are coming 
to sit beside us! 

Heavy and heated, in rich silks deeply flounced and em- 
broidered, and tight spindle-heeled boots — they seem glad 
of a rest. 

The dress of the elder one especially is a study — the 
flounces, the innumerable quantity of beads, the formless 
mass of plaits and gathers, the wonderful arrangement of 
whalebones in the body, the strict lacing down the back, the 
frills and lace round neck and shoulders, the several rings 
seen on the for a moment ungloved hand, the lump of trin- 
kets suspended from her waist, and the usual headgear 
[ — one cannot help thinking of the chaotic mass of human 
work this idle red easy-tempered woman carries about on 
her body], 

I close my eyes for a moment. How pleasant still and 
soft the air is! 

A vision goes past of dark and unspoken things — of 
criminals in prison, of rags and disease and destitution. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY iii 

Naked and outcast forms hurry by; 

The mother snatches some half-pence from her boy match- 
seller, and makes for the nearest gin-shop ; squalid streets 
and courts are in the background, and filthy work-shops ; 

Forms of humanity pass before me, unclothed ; voices 
hover round, wordless; 

Strange clinging voices call ; through the long high arches 
floating, through the night strange voices call. 

freedom! O shadow and night! and forms half- 
shapen in the womb of night — to the outlet of deliverance! 

These naked and outcast — I contemplate them long, un- 
disguised ; what they are is not hidden from me, I go back 
of them and beyond. 

1 pass as one among them, and feel the touch of their 
bodies, and of their arms twining — and turn down tired 
and sleepy beside those who sleep ; 

Half-human, crazy, hungry, condemned, bitter-lipped, 
forsaken, 

The young man with divine face so pale and misshapen 
I see — I see the poor thin body of the dying mother. 

[She is ignorant and unlettered, but when she talks to 
me in perfect child-like trust of the future of her orphaned 
children I think I have heard the words of the profoundest 
Wisdom that ever were uttered.] 

The rags fall of?, the prison doors fly wide. 
In vast phalanx, as out of night and oblivion, 
Unclothed, majestic, with wounds and disfigurements, as 
of him who hung upon the Cross — 

With stretched arms, shadow-gigantic and shining, as 



112 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

just alighted on the earth — they stand. I hear their voices 

call- 
Strange wild and inarticulate — 
Through the long high arches floating, through the night 

their voices call. 

I open my eyes again. The gay crowd still glides past, 
exchanging greetings, the flounces and lace are still on the 
chair beside me. I catch the fluffy smell. 

I rise and pass down towards the sea. It lies there, un- 
noticed as before, slate-green and solemn, stretching miles 
and miles away; but the wind has risen and is rising, and 
in the distance here and there it is fretful with sharp white 
teeth. 

High in My Chamber 

HIGH in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime — 
Midnight. 
The great city sleeps with arms outstretched supine under 
the stars — deep-breathing, hushed; 

Into the kennels of sleep are gone the loud-baying cares 
of day, and hunted man rests for a moment. 

The spangled stream has gone. 

The long procession of carriages through fashionable 
quarters, the stream of faces past gay shop-windows, 

And high above them the weary face of the needle- 
woman straining the last hour of daylight — 

All are gone. 

Into the hidden chamber of the dark the stream of life 
has poured itself, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 113 

For the conception of a new day. 

The note of sorrow sleeps, 

The weary throbbing brain and heart are lulled — as- 
suaged is the tossing sea; 

The wretched prisoner — the prisoner of the needle and 
dingy attic — is released : she dreams her impossible dream ; 

The prisoners of here and there, and of Necessity grip- 
ping close as a vice, are at liberty: they roam out beyond 
the star-circled walls of time and hear strange secrets whis- 
pered. 

But the hour swings onward. 

To good and evil alike — to the watching and the sleep- 
ing heart alike; 

To the mother as she lies beside her infant, sleeping, yet 
wakeful to its slightest movement; to the father as he sleeps 
beside the mother; 

To the young man as he sleeps beside his new-made bride, 
worshiping sleepless on her bosom; 

To the folded bud of childhood, sleeping deep as on a 
tranquil sea — to the bud just disclosed from Eden ; and to 
the child-like relaxed sleep again of extreme old age; 

The hour swings onward. 

To the waking fever of remorse ; 

To the long cadaverous vigil of physical pain ; 

And to the long vigil of the heart-broken wife praying 
vainly for respite from thought; 

The hour swings onward. 

High in heaven over the supine city — over the wilderness 
of roofs beneath the stars — 

The hour swings surely onward. 



114 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Again the great bell booms. 

Blossoming out of silence the rich music swells — 

Then dies away — the second stroke of midnight. 

And now as if awoken by that note of warning, over the 
vast city clash a thousand brazen chattering tongues, 

Ding, ding, clack, clack, 

From far and near, from railway-tower and steeple — 
blurring the thoughtful night — ding ding, clack clack. 

With scrambling stroke they hurry to tell the hour — 
and so straightway are silent. 

But the great bell goes booming slowly on, 

High in its tower in heaven among the stars. 

Thoughtful, deep-voiced, alone — till it has finished. 

So pass the hours, the spacious solemn hours, the shrill 
chattering hours. 

Out into the night they pass, out into the morning, 
For the conception of a new day. 



High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime, 
Deep deep deep, past all mortal hearing, down in the 
kennels of sleep below the world — 
The slow and muffled chime. 

The strokes of the changing hours of Man, 
The slow spacious thoughts of the changing generations — 
Through the night rising I hear. 

The thoughts of them who gather the generations into 
the great fold; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 115 

Through whose hearts the trampling millions pass — as 
surely indeed as through city streets; 

The thoughts of them through whose hearts the weary 
exiles, the prisoners of time, pass, liberating their souls in 
prayer till the air is charged with lightning — 

Through the night rising I hear. 

These are they who dream the impossible dream — and It 
comes true; 

Who hear the silent prayers, who accept the trampling 
millions, as the earth dreaming accepts the interminable feet 
of her children; 

Who dream the dream which all men always declare 
futile ; 

Who dream the hour which is not yet on earth — 

And lo ! it strikes. 

3 

High in my chamber I hear the deep Bell chime. 

Softly softly up through the universe, 

Vibrant in every leaf soft-answering, scarce audible as- 
cending, 

The great undertone — the deep rich musical solvent, 
swelling over the world, saturated with love, soft like the 
winds of spring (O who will give it utterance?) — 

Through the night rising I hear. 



D 



Deep Below Deep 

pEP below deep, 

Tearless, impenetrably frozen in misery — 
Is it a child or an old man? 



ii6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

[His face is the color of ashes: it is like a vacant spot 
without light.] 

A child surely, by his top-heavy knock-kneed gait and 
perching semi-perceptive ways; 

An old man, by the two deep horizontal furrows in his 
brow. 

Come in my child out of the bitter wind, and sit awhile 
by my fire, and eat. 

You need not speak or explain yourself: just sit down, 
and when you have eaten draw your chair close and get 
warm. 

[Perhaps he will thaw, I think, and tell me the story of 
his life.] 

But he sits silent — his hand in mine — with his head deep 
on his breast; and hardly moves — except once or twice to 
pick a bit of rag off the end of his trousers and throw it 
into the fire. 

Now his cap is off I see it is a fine head — a well- 
formed head and brow with short light curling hair; 

But when he lifts it his eyes are bleared and slow, with 
heavy lids, and they refuse to meet mine. 

We sit awhile silent; then with slow fitful answers, only 
now and then volunteering a word: 

It was my own fault: 

I went into t' pit when they did not want me to; 
They gave me a good education — I can read and write 
well enew — but I would go into t' pit. 

The very first day I was crushed by a wagon and was 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 117 

laid up a twelve-month : It was my legs that was crushed — 
but I got over it. 

Then my father died. My mother behaved very bad to 
me: I don't live with them now. When I am in work I 
lodge down by the Brewery, but now I sleep where I can. 

I have had twelve year at it. I am now twenty-three. 

It was all right at first, but times have been very bad 
lately. When you work half time you can't save nothing. 

I have been out of work three months. They shortened 
hands, and I was thrown out. They don't care : when times 
is bad they throw you out to make it worse. 

There's hundreds clemming one place or another, and 
they don't care. 

It's all the same to them that's well off themselves, and 
they have done it to spite us. 

Silence. 

Again the sunken head, again the impenetrable weary 
crushed frozen look — 

There was no thaw or change whatever. 

I knew him for many months, but there was no thaw or 
change to speak of 

Except the Lord Build the House 

SHE lies, whom Money has killed, and the greed of 
Money, 
The thrice-driven slave, whom a man has calmly tor- 
tured, 

And cast away in the dust — and calls it not murder, 
Because he only looked on; while his trusted lieutenants 



ii8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Supply and Demand pinned the victim down — and her 
own mother Nature slew her! 

The old story of the sewing machine — the treadle ma- 
chine ; 

Ten hours a day and five shillings a week, a penny an 
hour or so — if the numbers were of importance. 

Of course she fell ill. Indeed she had long been ailing, 
and the effort and the torture were slowly disorganising 
her frame; and already the grim question had been asked: 
"Might she have rest?" ( — the doctor said must — and for 
many a month, too.) 

And the answer came promptly as usual. "Have rest? 
— as much as she wanted! It was a pity, but of course if 
she could not work she could go. They would make no 
difficulty, as Supply would fill up her place as soon as 
vacant." 

One more struggle then. And now she must go, for 
work is impossible, and Supply has filled her place, and there 
is no difficulty — or difference — except to her. 

For her only the hospital pallet, and the low moaning of 
the distant world; 

For her only the fever and the wasting pain and the 
nightmare of the loud unceasing treadles; 

And the strange contrast in quiet moments of the still 
chamber and the one kindly face of the house-surgeon, 
stethoscope in hand, at her bedside; 

For her only, hour after hour, the dull throbbing recol- 
lection of the injustice of the world. 

The bleak unlovely light of averted eyes thrown back- 
wards and forwards over her whole life, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 119 

And the unstaunched wound of the soul which is their 
bitter denial. 

And at last the lessening of the pain, and a sense of 
quietude and space, and through the murky tormented air 
of the great city a light, a ray of still hope on her eyes 
peacefully falling; 

And then in a moment the passing of the light, and a 
silence in the long high-windowed ward ; 

And one with an aster or two and a few chrysanthemums, 
and one with a blown white rain-bewept rose half-timidly 
coming. 

To lay on her couch, with tears. 

And so a grave. 

In the dank smoke-blackened cemetery, in the dismal 
rain of the half-awakened winter day, 
A grave, for her and her only. 

And yet not for her only, but for thousands — 
For hundreds of thousands — to lie undone, forsaken, 
Tossed impatiently back from the whirling iron — 
The broken wheels, or may be merely defective — 
Who cares? — 

That as they spin roll off and are lost in the darkness, 
Run swiftly away (as if they were alive!) into the dark- 
ness, and are hidden ; 

Who cares? who cares? 

Since for each one that is gone Supply will provide a 
thousand. 

Who cares? who cares? 
O tear-laden heart! 



I20 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

O blown white rose heavy with rain! 

O sacred heart of the people! 

Rose, of innumerable petals, through the long night 
ever blossoming! 

Surely by thy fragrance wafted through the still night-air, 

Surely by thy spirit exhaled over the sleeping world, 
I know. 

Out of the bruised heart of thee exhaled, I know — 

And the vision lifts itself before my eyes: — 

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who 
build it. 

In vain millions of yards of calico and miles of lace 
work turned out per annum; 

In vain a people well clad in machine-made cloth and 
hosiery ; 

In vain a flourishing foreign trade and loose cash enough 
for a small war; 

In vain universal congratulations and lectures on Political 
Economy ; 

In vain the steady whirr of wheels all over the land, 
and men and women serving stunted and pale before them, 
as natural as possible; 

Except Love build the house, they labor in vain who 
build it, 

O rich and powerful of the earth! 

Behold, your riches are all in vain — you are poorer than 
the poorest of these children ! 

Against one such whom you have wronged your armies 
your police and all the laws that you can frame shall not 
prevail. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 121 

Your palaces of splendor are reared from the beginning 
upon a foundation of lies, and the graves that you have dug 
for others shall be for your ow^n burial. 

The w^ord is gone forth ! 

The w^ealth the power that you have coveted crumble 
from your grasp as in a dream. 

You have thought to drive armies of starving slaves to 
win idleness and luxury for you ; 

But it shall be as a dream : they shall surely elude you. 

Behold, your armies shall vanish away — even while the 
word is on your lips, while your hand of command is lifted. 

Your armies shall vanish away like smoke, they shall 
surely surely elude you. 

In Death shall they vanish away, 

(O fragrance wafted through the still night-air!) 

In Death shall they breathe through your bonds and 
become as the impalpable winds. 

Like deserters at night stealing away in thousands out of 
a camp. 

They shall pass a ghostly army to the other side : 

Broken and worn and sick — a ghostly army shall they 
pass and vanish ; 

And ye shall dream that they are gone. 

But they are not gone. 

For with the morning, out of the ground. 

Out of their mother Earth — star-thick, and ye cannot 
bind them more than ye can bind the stars — 

Out of the heart of their mother, and out of the hearts 
of the asters and star-shaped chrysanthemums, 



122 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Arising — 

Through the hollow air and down the rustling flowing 
rivers, 

Over the meadows with the feet of the wind whitening 
the grass, 

From the mystic chambers of their innumerable homes — 
out of the mystic doors — 

Out of the doors of Death and Birth, in thousands, out 
of the doors of preparation. 

Full-equipped hastening, from all sides swiftly gathering, 

A radiant army into your great towns pouring, 

Down your long streets striding, they shall return. 

Spirits of awful knowledge, 

(Clad anew with fleshly hands and feet, through sunlit 
eyes still glancing,) 

And of deep-gathered silent age-long experience; 

Spirits of the suffering brotherhood, spirits of awful au- 
thority — 

Before whom materials shrivel and the accumulations of 
Custom are blown on the wind like chaff — 

A self-appointed army they shall return: 

Out of whom the word of transformation — 

Whispered on many a half-awakened winter day to the 

silent earth alone — 

Shall be spoken aloud as with a trumpet over the world 

— and the world shall be changed. 



I 



I Come Forth from the Darkness 

COME forth from the darkness to smite Thee. — 
Who art thou, insolent of all the earth, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 123 

With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread, 

And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils 

Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee? 

Coward, without a name ! 

Ignorant curse! — and yet with names as many 

Alas! almost as Wealth has. Unclean life 

That makest a blight wherever thou alightest! 

I smite thee back. 

Darest thou yet be seen? (How long, how long, 

patient suffering men will ye endure?) 
Darest thou yet be seen? 

1 smite thee back. Go, return whence thou earnest. 
The gardens and the beautiful terraces, 

The palaces and theatres and halls 

Of our fair cities shall not see thee more. 



From this day the word is gone forth which waited long 
to be spoken. 

Who v/alks the streets shall see the lightning which is 
not in the clouds but in the eyes of men, 

Poising itself to strike. 

O shallow-pate, walking for ever in indifferent ignorance! 

Thou with the languid averted eyes and impossible pat- 
ronising airs. 

Thou forged bank-note which the great winds will blow 
crackling into the coping of heaven, 

Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes? 

Thou at thy club or country seat or in thy study, or 



124 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

sitting in the front pew at church — so luxurious, refined, 
learned, 

So pious — yet all out of other men's labor; 

Thou eager after elegant recognitions through the street 
hastening — 

Vulgar and infidel — from her path the poor woman with 
her bundle impatiently pushing; 

Thou in the household, in the shop, on the railway, with 
nameless airs the shameful difference marking; 

Thou oily in the pulpit ever preaching: Peace, peace — 
where there is no peace; 

Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes — 

To see and still to see — to stare with astonishment 

Over this wide and troubled Ocean, washing so near- 
importunate upon thee? 

This strange thing that it throws up in thy path! 

With wild eyes, bloodshot, haggard! 

Hast thou observed it? — hast thou well regarded? 

In thy smooth progress, say, hast well regarded? 

What? and thou seest nothing? — O look look! 
The grey old Ocean shivers in his sleep: 
Dreamwalker by the perilous brink, O look! 
The grey old Ocean shivers, turns his lids 
Whose lashes are the lightning, and arises 
Staggering from his hollows (Hear, O hear 
The hoarse wolf-howling in the pitchy night). 
The thunder of his footsteps shakes the interminable 
shore : 

Dream-walker, look! 

This white thing In thy path! 

Art mad? O look! — the wild eyes seest thou not? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 125 

The warning arm? — no flimsy phantom this, 
No pale stray figment of thy brain : but He. 

Thus by the shore continually, 

Pale spectral close-lipped haggard full in thy path warn- 
ing He stands, 

And thou complacent languid with averted eyes passest 
by him and onward, continually, to thy doom. 

Thou shalt never open thine eyes: (deep flashes to deep:) 
But the lightning which thou seest not shall wither 

thee up, 

And suddenly, in a moment, the flood uprising shall 

erase thee. 

O Deep flashing upward continually, 

Wild beautiful Ocean of faces! 

Ocean of glittering salt spray of tears! 

Of proud perpetual faith glooming through the long 
night ! 

Ocean of day and night! 

With white waves riding up continually. 

White faces nearing through the gloom — eager in end- 
less beauty! 

Not lightnings only: 

Tenderest phosphorescence over the wide-heaving surface 
gleaming. 

This also is thine. 

O pity! pity! 

And it might draw the heart of a man in pity from him! 

If he had eyes — to see, and still to see — 



126 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

To and fro through the streets wandering starless, 

Faces not charged with lightning, but with sorrow, voice- 
less unsmiting distant-luminous, 

(Auroral surely towards some greater day,) 

Eyes wistful-ignorant — the bloom of youth so fast going 
never to return — 

From dirt-bespattered countenances pathetically looking, 

Trustful reliant eyes — and whom to rely on? 

(Whom, these dumb thousands of years?) 

Parted lips yearning. 

Pale woman lips mute-appealing. 

Through the gay street unnoticed passing. 

From the haunts of fashion flying, from the blank stare 
of the houses of wealth and refinement. 

To hide their sorrow where none shall understand. 

Joyless, unaccusing. 

(O lips, your accusation is It not heard In the topmost 
heaven?) 

Faces of the world's deliberate refusal; 
Dead-pale faces, shrunken, as of leaves that the frost kills, 
Going about to hide themselves from the sun, to lie rot- 
ting and rotting in the dark, like the leaves — 
In the dark soil which their generations enrich. 

Face of the steadfast eyes, growing ever paler — of the 
weary human shuttle. 

Swift between factory and slum to the terrible engine- 
pulse of necessity alternating. 

Sacred pathetic face of the aged slave, out of the world 
descending, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 127 

Of the old woman, mender of carpets — giver of much 
and receiver of little in this life ; 

Face of unquestioning submission, kindly consecrating 
face, out of the world at length with farewell benedictions 
descending. 

Sublimely ignorant of all offence. 

Weak face of the drunkard — soon to be labeled suicide; 

Pale covert-eyed face of the thief ; 

Faces ever, faces riding up continually, eager in endless 
beauty, 

O it might draw the heart of a man from him with pity 
to behold you. 

But the world which has deliberately refused you, how 
shall it dare to pity you ? 

[O vulgar and infidel and shallow and insolent of all 
the earth, and ye who have taught yourselves so that ye can 
give no help. 

Come ye not here. Is it not sacred ground? 

Come ye not here. Defile not with your pity. 

Nay, for ye are smitten back and gone whence ye shall 
never return — 

You and your pity — abolished into the void.] 

Dumb awful prisoners! who except Death shall dare to 
pity you? 

To kiss you with the close kiss of deliverance? 

To take you up into the mountain tops and show you the 
country you have conquered for men? 



128 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The word which waited so long to be spoken, behold it 
is gone forth. 

Lo! shooting of swift auroral gleams, 

Thoughts hither and thither spreading, coherent, 

Words, hark! babbling multitudinous. 

Waves to and fro in the sunlight flowing, lisping — 

Louder and louder lisping — into one consent waking! 

O hearts, not in vain ! 

Joy, joy — so long a stranger upon earth — 

Joy is come up ! see the great laughing Ocean ! 

The deep floor paved with flowers! 

Joy is come up. Its waves flow over the world! 

To and fro, to and fro, tossing, tumultuously dancing, 

The sunlight-smitten waves flow over the world! 

How is the great deep changed! Joy is come up. 

Wealth the great gloom, the last worst tyranny, 

Sinks — is gone down for ever. Arise! arise! 

The gardens and the beautiful terraces. 

The palaces and theatres and halls 

Of our fair cities await your smiles, O Man: 

Your solemn love which is their dignity, 

Your earnest solemn love, their sacrament, 

With outstretched arms they wait. 

Arise, O Man! 

The long inheritance of the ages waits : 

Lo! the fair earth is thine — at length is thine. 

Joy! Joy! 

The light air and the nimble winds, the blue 

Cloud-islanded seas of heaven, the great glad fields 

Waving with golden grain, green orchards dusk 

With pensive shadows — all the round earth is thine. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 129 

Child that shalt bless thy mother, 
Joy, joy! The earth is thine. 

Sunday Morning near a Manufacturing Town 

SUNDAY, a still autumn morning, and all the roads on 
the outskirts are thronged with people. 
Where the streets begin to run wild towards the coun- 
try, with patch-work of garden-allotments, and occasional 
hedge-rows and overhanging trees, they go — 

Pale-faced men and girls hardly escaped for an hour or 
two from breathing the eternal smoke. 

The sun shines softly — it is very pleasant. 

Here comes a whole family: the mother holds a baby to 
her breast, the father carries the little boy on his arm — • 
two other children play around them ; 

There go two factory girls, with faded shawls thrown 
over their heads — their arms round each other's necks ; both 
have clear soft eyes, and both have fawn-colored opaque 
skins, marked with the small-pox; 

Here shambling along in the opposite direction a group 
of ill-made boys, carrying dinner-kerchiefs crammed and 
purple-stained with blackberries. They have been out early 
and are returning. 

Most of the men stand about in knots on the road or in 
their gardens, some smoking — some with fox-terriers and 
coursing-dogs. 

Handsomely stand the yellow and the lilac dahlias on 
their tall stalks; and the marigolds and other flowers look 
well amid the green. The air is full of the scent of celery. 

Some are banking up their celery-beds, some are getting 



I30 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

potatoes, others lie on their backs enjoying the lazy air, 
others are gathering flowers. 

Here comes one with a nosegay of all sorts, here another 
with a great armful of dahlias nodding amid their leaves as 
he walks, here another with quantities of brown and yellow 
calceolaria — almost every one has a flower of some sort. 

There is plenty of chaff as the groups of young mechan- 
ics pass the groups of chatting laughing girls — some go apart 
arm in arm together. 

Withal the wan look of many faces there is I know not 
what sense of naturalness and wholesome feeling abroad 
to-day (the stuffy people are safe out of the way in 
church) — 

The air is full of voices and laughter; from some of the 
neighboring cottages come sounds of music. 

It is well. I welcome you, O crisp uprising life! 

I welcome you, O crisp green shoot which the still bright 
morning has called forth! 

It does not need much to see how deep your roots are fed 
in the strong soil of necessity; 

Not much to see how native and fresh a life you indi- 
cate, 

And that the limp decaying leaves and dead things of the 
earth will not overlie you much longer 



I 



In the Drawing Rooms 

N the drawing rooms I saw scarce one that seemed at 
ease ; 
They were half -averted sad anxious faces, impossible 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 131 

pompous faces, drawling miowling faces, peaked faces well 
provided with blinkers, 

And their owners kept standing first on one leg and then 
on the other. 

I felt very depressed. 

Wherever I went it was the same — it was like a night- 
mare — I could not escape from it. 

Ever the same miowls and drawls, the same half-averted 
sad uneasy looks, the same immensely busy people doing 
really nothing, the same one-legged weary idling, mutual 
boredom, and vampire business. 

In the street I could not escape it — at the soiree, the 
lecture room, the concert ; I felt stifled ; the sky above me 
was like lead, and the earth — I could have lain on it and 
cried as a child, 

For I felt like one deprived of his natural food, ex- 
hausted, and faint with starvation. 

[For indeed it is so, that man can not live by bread alone. 
This is the silent decree of immortality whereby into his 
body are wrought for its nourishment unseen intangible es- 
sences — of the faces of his fellows and of the touch of their 
bodies and the breath of their lives about him. Which ave- 
nues if they be shut — if the faces be like closed doors, and 
the hands be withdrawn, and the breath of society about him 
be corrupt — a man shall shrivel and die, as surely as an 
infant from its mother's breasts forbidden.] 

And at the railway station, and in the train flying over 
field and river through the dark, I could not escape that 
vampire horror. 

Was this then the sum of life? 



132 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

A grinning gibbering organisation of negations — a polite 
trap, and circle of endlessly complaisant faces bowing you 
back from all reality! 

Was it that men should give all their precious time and 
energy to the plaiting of silken thongs and fetters innu- 
merable — 

To bind themselves prisoners — to condemn themselves to 
pick oakum of the strands of real life for ever? 

Was it mere delusion and bottomless nightmare? really 
at last the much talked-of and speculated-about existence in 
two dimensions only? 

And as I thought of the fields and rivers below me in 
the dark, returning life thrilled in a faint wave of laughter 
through me from the beautiful bounding earth ; 

And as a woman for the touch of a man, 

So I cried in my soul even for the violence and outrage 
of Nature to deliver me from this barrenness. 

Well, as it happened just then — and as we stopped at a 
small way-station — my eyes from their swoon-sleep opening 
encountered the grimy and oil-besmeared figure of a stoker. 

Close at my elbow on the foot-plate of his engine he was 
standing, devouring bread and cheese. 

And the firelight fell on him brightly as for a moment- his 
eyes rested on mine. 

That was all. But it was enough. 
The youthful face, yet so experienced and calm, was 
enough ; 

The quiet look, the straight untroubled unseeking eyes. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 133 

resting upon me — giving me without any ado the thing 
I needed. 

[Indeed because they sought nothing and made no claim 
for themselves, therefore it w^as that they gave me all.] 

For in a moment I felt the sting and torrent of Reality. 

The swift nights out in the rain I felt, and the great 
black sky overhead, and the flashing of red and green lights 
in the forward distance, 

The anxious straining for a glimpse sideways into the 
darkness — cap tied tightly on — the dash of cold and wet 
above, the heat below: 

All this I felt, as it had been myself. 

The weird look of hedgerows and trees in the wild glare 
as we pass, the straining and leaping of the engine, and 
the precious human freight madly borne behind, 

The great world reeling by, the rails and the ballast 
ribbon-like unreeling — out of darkness arriving — phantasmal 
inexorable flawless! 

[Stand firm, bridge of many arches while we pass swiftly 
over the tops of the trees! 

Hold, ties and struts and well-braced girders, hold while 
our iron feet ring resounding over the river! 

Hold firm, phantasmal world, even as thou dost — inex- 
orably firm — whether for good or evil, hold!] 

O the mad play! 

And the dumb sense of tension when wife or sister or 
friend is one of the precious freight; 

And the long hours of unremitted watchfulness, and the 
faithful unremitting service of the machinery; 

And the faithful responsive wheeling of the stars, ful- 
filling the hours, 



134 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The slow lifting of the Moon through the clouds, the 
changes of light, west and east. 
And the breaking of the morning. 

All these in his eyes who stood there, lusty with well-knit 
loins, devouring bread and cheese — all these and something 
more: 

Nature standing supreme and immensely indifferent in 
that man, yet condensed and prompt for decisive action : 

True eyes, true interpreters, striking as a man wielding 
a sledge strikes, in whom long practice has ensured the abso- 
lute consent of all his muscles! 

True eyes, true interpreters — of abounding gifts free 
givers — 

Without wrigglings and contortions, without egotism, 
embarrassments, grimaces, innuendos. 

Without constraint and without stint, free! 

eyes, O face, how in that moment without any ado 
you gave me all! 

How in a moment the whole vampire brood of flat par- 
alytic faces fled away, and you gave me back the great 
breasts of Nature, when I was rejected of others and like 
to die of starvation. 

1 do not forget. 

It is not a little thing — though you passed away so quickly 
and were wholly unconscious of it. 

It is not a little thing, you — wherever you are — follow- 
ing the plough, or clinging with your feet to the wet rigging, 
or nursing your babe through the long day when your hus- 
band is absent, or preparing supper for his return, or you 
on the foot-plate of your engine — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 135 

Who stand mediating there against Necessity, wringing 
favors and a little respite for your fellows, translating the 
laws for them, making a channel for the forces; 

In whom through faithful use, through long patient and 
loyal exercise the channels have become clean — 

[Clean and free the channels of your soul, though your 
body be smirched and oily — ] 

It is not a little thing that by such a life your face should 
become as a lantern of strength to men ; 

That wherever you go they should rise up stronger to 
the battle, and go forth with good courage 

Nay, it is very great. 

I do not forget. 

Indeed I worship none more than I worship you and 
such as you, 

Who are no god sitting upon a jasper throne. 

But the same toiling in disguise among the children of 
men and giving your own life for them. 



In a Manufacturing Town 

AS I walked restless and despondent through the gloomy 
city, 
And saw the eager unresting to and fro — as of ghosts in 
some sulphurous Hades; 

And saw the crowds of tall chimneys going up, and the 
pall of smoke covering the sun, covering the earth, lying 
heavy against the very ground; 

And saw the huge refuse-heaps writhing with children 
picking them over. 



\. 



136 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And the ghastly half-roofless smoke-blackened houses, and 
the black river flowing below; 

As I saw these, and as I saw again far away the Capi- 
talist quarter, 

With its villa residences and its high-walled gardens and 
its well-appointed carriages, and its face turned away from 
the wriggling poverty which made it rich ; 

As I saw and remembered its drawing-room airs and 
affectations, and its wheezy pursy Church-going and its gas- 
reeking heavy-furnished rooms and its scent-bottles and its 
other abominations — 

I shuddered: 

For I felt stifled, like one who lies half-conscious — know- 
ing not clearly the shape of the evil — in the grasp of some 
heavy nightmare. 

Then out of the crowd descending towards me came a 
little ragged boy: 

Came — from the background of dirt disengaging itself — 
an innocent wistful child-face, begrimed like the rest but 
strangely pale, and pensive before its time. 

And in an instant (it was as if a trumpet had been blown 
in that place) I saw it all clearly, the lie I saw and the 
truth, the false dream and the awakening. 

For the smoke-blackened walls and the tall chimneys, 
and the dreary habitations of the poor, and the drearier 
habitations of the rich, crumbled and conveyed themselves 
away as if by magic; 

And instead, in the backward vista of that face, I saw 
the joy of free open life under the sun : 

The green sun-delighting earth and rolling sea I saw, 

The free sufficing life — sweet comradeship, few needs and 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 137 

common pleasures — the needless endless burdens all cast 
aside, 

Not as a sentimental vision, but as a fact and a neces- 
sity existing, I saw 

In the backward vista of that face. 

Stronger than all combinations of Capital, wiser than all 
the Committees representative of Labor, the simple need 
and hunger of the human heart. 

Nothing more is needed. 

All the books of political economy ever written, all the 
proved impossibilities, are of no account. 

The smoke-blackened walls and tall chimneys duly crum- 
ble and convey themselves away; 

The falsehood of a gorged and satiated society curls 
and shrivels together like a withered leaf, 

Before the forces which lie dormant in the pale and wist- 
ful face of a little child. 

What Have I to do with Thee 



WEARY 

" " night I 



EARY with the restless burden of this world last 
ght I fell 

Dreaming on my couch, in Nature's bosom, and the dream 
was well ; 

For with morning I awoke triumphant like a child in 
glee. 

Singing: World, I prithee tell me, What have I to do 
with thee? 



I who am a child, content if but with wonder and with 
love, 



138 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

• 

With the quiet Earth beneath me and the splendid Sun 

above, 

To whom laughter comes unbidden in the watches of the 

night, 

Whom a daisy in the meadow fills with ever new de- 
light- 
World, unquiet world I dwell in, with thy wearisome 

grimaces, 

(Like an old and odious lover, who importunately paces 
Ever up and down before one,) world of fashion, world 

of cant. 

World of philanthropic schemes, committee-meetings, 

crazes, rant, 

World of void affected duties, world quite dumb of 

love's decree, 

thou solemn prig, pray tell me, What have I to do 
with thee? 

1 whom nature made rejoicing in my meed of strength 
and skill. 

Proud with those I love to labor, lingering in the sweet 
air, till 

Twilight brings the firelit home and faces, whom she 
counted free 

To all her stores, nor stayed to reckon, whom she taught 
the mystery 

Of the whole Earth inly heaving with desire hid at the 
core. 

Whom she filled with tender grieving, whom she smote 
with passion sore — 

World of brick walls in perspective, world of avenues of 
dirt, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 139 

World of hideous iron railings, stucco and the window- 
squirt, 

World of pigmy men and women, dressed like monkeys, 
that go by. 

World of squalid wealth, of grinning galvanised society, 

World of dismal dinner-parties, footmen, intellectual 
talk. 

Heavy-furnished rooms, gas, sofas, armchairs, girls that 
cannot walk. 

Books that are not read, food music novels papers flung 
aside, 

World of everything and nothing — nothing that will fill 
the void; 

World that starts from manual labor, as from that which 
worse than damns, 

Keeps reality at arm's length, and is dying choked with 
shams. 

World, in Art and Church and Science, sick with infi- 
delity, 

O thou dull old bore, I prithee. What have I to do 
with thee? 

Who is master? Tell me that. Didst thou make me? 
or thinkest thou 

By the bold array thou donnest, by thy frowns and 
puckered brow. 

To impose that flam upon me? Nay! for far too clearly 
through 

Thy false life and fancy make-up, through the artificial 
hue 

Health paints not upon thy cheek, thy glassy eyes with 
sunken rims 



140 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Staring, and the meaningless spasmodic corpse-dance of 
thy limbs — 

Right through thy whole being looking into what once 
was thy heart 

I behold how hollow lifeless and corrupt a thing thou art. 

Strange! — yet so it is — that stronger than a world on 
granite piled, 

More than all Wealth and Tradition is the weak sigh 
of a child. 

We — the future's dreamers — come, and coming look thee 
in the face: 

"World, to Right-about'" we bid thee; "'March — and 
quickly — into space!" 

As TO You O Moon 

AS to you O Moon — 
I know very well that when the astronomers look 
at you through their telescopes they see only an aged and 
wrinkled body; 

But though they measure your wrinkles never so care- 
fully they do not see you personal and close — 

As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last 
night to the eyes of a child. 

When you thought no one else was looking. 

Gustily ran the wind down the bare comfortless street, 
the clouds flew in long wild streamers across your face, the 
few still on foot were hurrying home\^^ards — 

When, as between the wisps of rain O moon you shone 
out wonderfully bare and bright, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 141 

Lo! far down In the face of a boy I saw you. 

Dashed with rain, wet with tears, 

Stopping suddenly to lean his head against a wall, caught 
by your look — 

The pale smudged face, the tense glittering eyes, never 
swerving a moment. 

The curls fringing his dirty cap, the rare pale light of 
wonder and of suffering: 

Yes, far down, as in a liquid pool In the woods, cen- 
turies down under the surface, as I passed I distinctly saw 
you. 

I should like to know what you were doing there. 

You old moon, with your magic down in that boy's soul 
so powerfully working. 

While all the time the appearance of you was journeying 
up above In the sky! 

I should like to know how many thousands and thousands 
you have looked at like that, so quietly and calm-decep- 
tively : 

Why, the reflected light is In their eyes yet — pale sleepless 
maidens looking out from Ivied casements, choral processions 
winding upwards at dusk to the groves of Ashtoreth, cave- 
dwellers ages ago sitting at the mouths of their caves — I 
see the glitter of sparkles as from an immense ocean. 

You are an artful old (heavenly) body! 

One might almost think that there really was nothing 
behind those wrinkles. 

And that the effluences of gravitation and magnetism 
which the astronomers think so much of were really the last 



142 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

word to be said about you — as a child might know an elderly 
dame by the camphor bag which she carried in her pocket, 
and nothing more. 

Yet I fancy that as you jog along round the earth you 
take very good note in your quiet way of the limpid faces 
looking up at you, peering deep — centuries down — into each ; 

I fancy that you are not ill-pleased to pass as you do for 
a harmless old lady — plucking thus with the less hindrance 
the flowers that you love; 

I fancy that somewhere among the niches and chasms 
of those rugged craters you surely treasure them up, sacred 
and faithful, against a day that we little dream of; 

Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do 
not yield yourself up as to what you are at the first or the 
thousandth onset, 

And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know 
as little about you as any one — 

Perhaps less than most. 

How curious the mystery of creation, the juggle of the 
open daylight! and all things sworn conspirators to that 
end! 

Lo! the quiet moon in the sky — ^yet to a child it has told 
its secret. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 143 

Squinancy-Wort 

WHAT have I done?— 
I am a little flower, 
Out of many a one 

That twinkles forth after each passing shower. 
White, with a blushful glow, 
In the sweet meadows I grow. 
Or innocent over the hill tops sport and run. — 
What have I done? 

Many an age agone, 

Before man walked on earth, 

I was. In the sun I shone ; 

I shook in the wind with mirth ; 

And danced on the high tops looking out seaward — where 

I had birth. 
Web-footed monsters came 
And into the darkness went 
In ponderous tournament. 
Many an age agone. 

But on the high tops I dwelt ever the same, 
With sisters many a one, 
Guiltless of sin and shame! — 
What have I done? 

What have I done? — Man came, 
Evolutional upstart one! 
With the gift of giving a name 
To everything under the sun. 
What have I done? — Man came 



144 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

(They say nothing sticks like dirt), 
Looked at me with eyes of blame, 
And called me **Squinancy-wort." 

What have I done? I linger 

(I cannot say that I live) 

In the happy lands of my birth ; 

Passers-by point with the finger; 

For me the light of the sun 

Is darkened. Oh, what would I give 

To creep away and hide my shame in the earth! — 

What have I done? 

Yet there is hope. I have seen 

Many changes since I began. 

The web-footed beasts have been 

(Dear beasts!) — and gone, being part of some wider plan. 

Perhaps in his infinite mercy God will remove this Man! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 145 



Not of myself — / have no power of myself — 
But out of you who read do I write these words; 
And whether you understand them or not is nothing to 
me: I sort rather with those who do not read them. 

Lo! I Open a Door 

LO! I open a door. 
Through all suffering, through being an outcast my- 
self, in prison and condemned. 

Lying on the floor of existence as one accursed and out- 
lawed — 

Who shall not pass by me into joy eternal? 

By This Heart 

BY this heart sacred for you O children — for you a few 
years beating; 

By the deep yearnings of it, flowing, following you — and 
the world made holy wherever you have trod ; 

By the firm pulse of it, and by its silent-dropping dark 
tears ; 

By its weakness and by its immortal strength ; 

By the love with which it encloses, in which it contin- 
ually laves you ; 

By you greater yourselves; and by the love which I see 
flowing surely from you to me; 



146 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

By these I put all evil aside. 

And I approach you, nearer, nearer — even so nearer than 
all thought — 

And remain w^ith you, doubting fearing nothing. 

For fear I put away from you, and the w^retched unrest 
of the world ; 

And from the Maya of appearances I deliver you: be- 
lieve me here is deliverance; 

[And not here only, in this inch of space and time, but 
wherever . . ] — 

And I show you the inheritance of the riches of all time. 

Yet sorrow, the gift of gifts, revealer of eternal joy, I 
give you not; 

But One shall come in the night-time, bringing it, to 
transmute the world for you, 

Taking you by the hand, even while you live, through 
the great gate of Death into Elysian fields. 

There as the nightingale through the night beside his 
mate sings. 

In the soft dark — filled with the spirit of the stars and 
of the flowing river and the wafted fragrance of the fields: 
the sunlit memories of the day about him, and above him 
his own voice in the clear height poised unfaltering — 

So in perfect contentment thro' all your mortal work 

Shall your spirit sublimely sing. 

As One Who from a High Cliff 

I LOOK upon my life as from afar: 
I hear its murmur, mark its changeful sheen, 
(As one who from a high cliff marks the waves 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 147 

He just now rode on,) 

Beautiful, gleaming, shot with hues from heaven, 
With strange pale lustre — beautiful indeed, 
O God, from this great eminence of Death. 



To One in Trouble 

THE Lord of heaven and earth, out of darkness, out of 
silence, by ways that thou understandest not, shall 
redeem thy soul. 



Y 



These Waves of Your Great Heart 

OU battling with your own heart, speaking the words 
of peace in vain, — 



The convulsive waves heave and break, do they not? 

They go moaning down the dark shore, bitterly, un- 
abating, 

Heavily with weary thud falling falling — into the dark- 
ness falling. 

O heart! 

This is the ocean that is broken (on its surface) with 
measureless never-ending unrest. 

O heart! 

This is the wide and immense ocean: over which who 
shall sail? 

O child! 

You that shiver there in the night-wind by the dread 
white-lipped shore! 



148 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Do you guess how wide this Ocean is? 

Do you know how it rolls its waters away beyond the 
farthest horizon that you have imagined? 

Afar, afar — spreading blue beneath the sun by coasts of 
calm and tropic beauty, by coasts of tumbling laughing 
beauty, by bays and bars and river-narrow straits? — 

This ocean of the heart? — 

Afar, afar — or bearing on its breast the great white- 
sailed ships of the earth, or the broad disc of the moon, or 
the images of men's homes in unimagined lands? 

Thought you, frail phantom roaming by the shore. 

Gazing wide into the night — a stranger where you had 
fancied yourself most at home — 

Thought you that this great Ocean was to be like an 
ornamental water in your garden? 

Thought you that you knew whence these convulsive 
waves? — the winds that stirred them, the deeps where they 
were born? 

Think you they weep your sorrows alone, or shake the 
ground only under your feet? 

Not so! not so! 

But ever flowing from afar. 

From the immeasurable past, from the illimitable shores 
of human life for ever flowing — on its margin passionately 
breaking. 

With strange uncipherable meanings, whose words are 
the myriad years. 

With speechless terror and amazement to the children 
beside it, 

With amazement of expanded identity, and the inflow of 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 149 

immortal swift-riding purposes, incontrollable, leading 
straight to death, 

In living procession out of the deep — O child! to you 
they come. 

These waves of your great heart, rolling flowing with- 
out end: 

Through long long ages, under storm and sunshine, by 
day and night, in indomitable splendor rolling, 

At your feet now mournfully breaking. 



Thus as I Yearned for Love 

THUS as I yearned for love, 
At length the clouds parted. 

And I knew the old old vision: 

Him with the sorrowful eyes (pain, unrelenting pain), 

With the distant piercing unapproachable eyes, I knew, — 

The face from the murky clouds disclosed, and with- 
drawn again. 

O night, fold upon fold, impenetrable, with silent tears 
in the darkness falling — mute night, remover of all evi- 
dence ! 

O dawn, with early rising almost before it is light, and 
preparations for a long journey! 

O day, with children playing by the roadside, and greet- 
ings exchanged, and cheery demeanor! 

And somewhere, unseen, over all, the same unapproach- 
able eyes looking as ever down. 



I50 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Eternal Hunger 

ETERNAL Hunger! O through the black night 
Rave, Winds. The forest fanes 
Tremble, rock, crash, and ring incessantly 
The cry of homeless spirits. Roar 
Ye torrents from the mountains. Roar O Sea, 
Rave under the pale stars. O gulf of Death 
Yavi^n blackening beneath. 
But O great Heart, 

Love greater than all, 

Over the mountains the forests and the seas, 
O'er the black chasm of death, in spectral haste 
Thou ridest, and the hungry winds and waves 
Are but Thy hounds: Thou the eternal huntsman! 

Great heart and lonely, indomitable In pride 

As the pale Titan! a storm-battling eagle 

Art thou above the promontory of the world; 

Ay, and ah me! 

A tender little bird 

Wind-blown and baffled from its nest for ever. 

Pain, ah! eternal pain. 

1 hear Aeolian harpings wail and die 

Down forest glades, and through the hearts of men, 
Pain, pain, eternal pain! 

High around the cloud--girt pinnacle of gaunt snow 
I hear the wind moan Pain, eternal pain. 

O man, O child of Man! 

Thou frail and baffled bird, thou weary thing. 

Thou strong to suffer, of satanic pride. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 151 

I take thee up Into this height of pain, 
And shew thee all the kingdoms of the earth, 
Yea, all the kingdoms of the hearts of men — 
The pure and light-strewn kingdoms of strong love: 

Gaze long in silence, friend ; gaze long for all are thine. 



Child of the Lonely Heart 

/^^HILD of the lonely heart, 
^^ O clinging supplicating soul, 

Through thy chamber, thy prison, thy palace, the body, 
solitary roaming, 

The great world through the windows sadly, question- 
ingly exploring. — 

O love, love, love. 

At thy feet. 

By thy side. 

My hand if only resting in thine: 

See, I am so little, I ask so little — 

// thou wilt take this little overflowing cup 

Into thy great ocean. 

O love, love, love. 
Thee alone. 

Always only thee: I find nothing beautiful but thee, 
Lof when I look forth, what is it all? 
These lines of houses. 
This sad interminable sky. 

This gay life — which is my pretext — but underneath 1 
am sick, sick at heart 

For one touch of true love. 



152 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

O love, love, love. 

Since I was a little child, and till I die, the same. 

Nothing I reserve — 

/ am so little and I ask so little: 

If thou wilt take this little overflowing cup 

Into thy great ocean. 

Child of the lonely heart, 

O clinging supplicating soul, 

Through thy chamber, thy prison, thy palace — 

Ah! children, through the world, through the ages, by 
thousands and thousands, by millions and millions. 

Unaware, unwhispered — in your own great fellowship 
uninitiate — 

Blindly yearning, tentatively questioningly darkly ex- 
ploring. 

Through the great Mother-heart eternally ascending! 



To One Who Is Where the Eternal Are 

PASS friend pass: 
Lest body and soul with desire I be consumed, 
Pass, pass from me. 

Your eyes burn in upon me. Out of the night. 
Out of the darks of time, flashing, out of the still 
Still height I cannot attain to, solemnly 
Stedfastly gazing — 
Their light pierces my brain. 

O this is cruel! 

Knowing that I cannot attain, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 153 

Why do you mock me? — passing me like a shadow, 
Passing, passing, and again returning; 
In the night within me like a great star shining, 
In the world without passing me like a shadow. 

If I were the yellow sands your feet once trod, 
By the deep blue where they were still delaying; 
Were I the sea that clipped your body round, 
The shores, the ships, — 
Ah me ! — 

Were I the thing your hand most idly touched. 
The light that fell upon your Southern home. 
The murmur of the forest in your ears, 
Where you, friend, once walked, dreaming! 

Time answers like the closing of a door, 
I am an exile. The swift years have set 
Their gulf between us — you are safe from me; 
Torment me then no longer: pass O pass. 
Kiss me with shadowy lips, and pass from me. 

I see the deep gulf roll below me now — 

The leaden-colored flood, the scum, the swirl, 

The shadow-peopled banks. 

I feel the cold dank wind: Death blows upon it. 

I reel upon the edge — 

Sickness comes o'er me, clammy faintness, death. 



Now am I near to Death. 

The world for me is changed. The noiseless wing 



154 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Sways over all. The mountains are unreal, 
The stones I walk on are not stones, the air 
Breathes from another world, the voices call, 
The hands I grasp remind me. All is still, 
Still as deep night within. Without, the world 
Hangs beautiful and distant like a vision. 

Hush ! all is silent. — 

Now it Is very near. 

Noiselessly through the darkness, noiselessly 

Gliding — ah! nearer nearer! 

Softly out of the night, with soft step stealing 

Nearer, ah, nearer! 

With faint breath over Ocean, fresh and cool, 

Death! death! O friend, 

O far-lnfolder, speak! Is It Thou Indeed 

Pouring faint fragrance, drowning drowning me 

Out of the world at length? — at length O friend, 

O hesitating long! 

Ah! let me die! 

Snatch me thou Wonderful, 

Thou with Almighty arms, enfold me, crush me 

Close through all creature-pain at length to Thee. 



The passion is gone past. 

Now know I that death has been near me all my life — 
that it is a part of my life. 

[O beautiful Ocean! O dim fluid plains and aerial 
distances ! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 155 

O headland where I stand for ever gazing!] 

The passion Is gone past. 

friend, pale friend, stay with me now I pray. 
Your eyes no more 

Out of the dark consume me — fitfully flashing 
Where the great waves break, weary without end. 
Swaying swaying, softly eternally swaying. 
The flood lies calm now. Stay with me then I pray. 
Dwell with me through the day; 

And through the night, and where It Is neither night nor 
day, 

Dwell quietly. Pass pass not any more. 

Thou canst not pass. 

1 too am where thou art : through all this life 
I walk the quiet kingdoms of the dead 

Fast hand in hand with thee. 

Press now the sweet life of thy lips on mine; 

I hold thee fast: 

Not by the yellow sands nor the blue deep, 

But In my heart thy heart of hearts — 

A great star, growing, shining. 

Through the Long Night 

YOU, proud curve-lipped youth, with brown sensitive 
face, 
Why, suddenly, as you sat there on the grass, did you 
turn full upon me those twin black eyes of yours. 

With gaze so absorbing so Intense, I a strong man trem- 
bled and was faint? 

Whj In a moment between me and you In the full 



156 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

summer afternoon did Love sweep — leading after it in pro- 
cession across the lawn and the flowers and under the wav- 
ing trees huge dusky shadows of Death and the other world ? 

I know not. 

Solemn and dewy-passionate, yet burning clear and sted- 
fast at the last, 

Through the long night those eyes of yours, dear, remain 
to me — 

And I remain gazing into them. 

To A Stranger 

O FAITHFUL eyes, day after day as I see and know 
you — unswerving faithful and beautiful — going about 
your ordinary work unnoticed, 

I have noticed — I do not forget you. 

I know the truth the tenderness the courage, I know the 
longings hidden quiet there. 

Go right on. Have good faith yet — keep that your un- 
seen treasure untainted. 

Many shall bless you. To many yet, though no word 
be spoken, your face shall shine as a lamp. 

It shall be remembered, and that which you have desired 
— in silence — shall come abundantly to you. 

To A Friend 

FAITHFUL eyes, fail not. 
Though sorrows come upon you, though temptations 
try, though age and grief assault you — fail not, fail not. 
How many hang upon you for your light. 
Shining in darkness — as the stars that shine 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 157 

Upon the mighty deep for mariners ! 

O eyes, be true, give all away for that — 

Give all your days and all good name and honor, 

If need should be, for that. That we may steer 

Through the dark night by you. 

Of the Love That You Poured Forth 

/^F the love that you poured forth, dear friend, in vain — 
^^ like a cup of water in the wide and thirsty desert — but 
it was all your life to you, 

Do you dream that it is lost? 

Perhaps it is — it may well seem so just now to you — ^yet 
indeed I do not think so. 

As A Woman of a Man 

DEMOCRACY! 
O sombre swart face, now thou art very beautiful 
to me! 

haughty brow, with glittering withdrawn eyes, not a 
little contemptuous, 

Thou art very beautiful to me! 

1 am as a child before thee; 

All that I have learned, all my fancical knowledge. 
My familiarity with times and distances, 
All my refinement is nothing — my delicate hands, man- 
ners. 

My glibness is nothing; 

I crave the touch of thy soul, thou strong one, 

I crave thy love. 



158 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Come! who art no longer a name: 

Gigantic Thou, with head aureoled by the sun — wild 
among the mountains — 

Thy huge limbs naked and stalwart erected member, 
Thy lawless gait and rank untamable laughter, 
Thy heaven-licking wildfire thoughts and passions — 
I desire. 

All conventions, luxuries, all refinements of civilization, 
and tyrannous wants. 

Acquisitions, formulated rules, rights, prescriptions, and 
whatever constitutes a barrier — 

I discard. 

All the cobwebs of science, and precedents and conclu- 
sions of authority. 

All possessions, and impedimenta of property, all rights 
of bundles and baggage — 

I disown. 

I stand prepared for toil, for hardship — this instant if 
need be to start on an unforeseen and distant journey — 
I am wholly without reserve: 
As a woman of a man so I will learn of thee, 
I will draw thee closer and closer, 
I will drain thy lips and the secret things of thy body, 
I will conceive by thee, Democracy. 

O Love — to Whom the Poets 

OLOVE — to whom the poets have made verses — 
Whom the shepherds on the hills have piped to, and 
maidens sighed within their lonely bowers. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 159 

Whom the minstrels have sung, handing down their songs 
from one generation to another — 

To thy praise over the world resounding 
I add my strain. 

Not because thou art fair; 

Not because thine eyes glance winningly, nor because of 
the sly arch of thine eyebrows; 

Not because thy voice is like music played in the open air, 

And thy coming like the dawn on the far-off mountains; 

Not because thou comest with the dance and the song, 
and because the flashing of thy feet is like the winds of 
Spring ; 

Nor because thou art sweetly perfumed, 

Do I praise thee. 

Not because thy dwelling is among knights and ladies — 
afar from all that is common or gross; 

Not because thou delayest to the sound of playing foun- 
tains on marble terraces, 

And white hands caress thee and clip thy wing-feathers. 

And meek thoughts and blameless conversation attend 
thee; 

Not because thy place is among the flowers and the wine- 
cups in spacious halls, 

And because the sight of Death appalls thee ; 

Nor because, love, thou art a child : 

But because as on me now, full-grown giantesque out of 
the ground out of the common earth arising, 

Very awful and terrible in heaven thou appearest; 



i6o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Because as thou comest to me In thy majesty sweeping 
over the world with lightnings and black darkness, 

[And the old order shrivels and disappears from thy 
face,] 

I am as a leaf borne, as a fragrance exhaled before thee — 

As a bird crying singed by the prairie-fire; 

Because Thou rulest O glorious, and before thee all else 
fails, 

And at thy dread new command — at thy new word 
Democracy — the children of the earth and the sea and the 
sky find their voices, and the despised things come forth 
and rejoice; 

Because in thy arms O strong one I laugh Death to 
scorn — nay I go forth to meet him with gladness; 

Ay, because thou takest away from me all strength but 
thine own. 

Because thou takest all doubt and power of resistance, 

Because out of disallowed and unaccepted things — and 
always out of these — full-armed and terrific, 

Like a smiting and consuming flame, O Love, O Democ- 
racy, 

Even out of the faces and bodies of the huge and tame- 
less multitudes of the Earth, 

A great ocean of fire with myriad tongues licking the 
vault of heaven. 

Thou arisest — 

Therefore O love O flame wherein I burning die and am 
consumed, carried aloft to the stars a disembodied voice^ — 

O dread Creator and Destroyer, 

Do I praise Thee. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY i6i 

Who You Are I Know Not 

WHO you are I know not, but I have it before me that 
you shall know. 

For a certainty you are not greater or less than me: I 
neither look upon you with envy nor with pity, with def- 
erence nor with contempt. 

Endowments and dignities and accomplishments are of 
no account whatever; but honesty, and to stand in time 
under the great law of Equality — after which you will be 
satisfied, and joy will take possession of you. 

Till then, farewell. Do not follow me, but go your own 
way voyaging — and then haply some time we shall meet. 



i62 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Have Faith 

DO not hurry: have faith. 
Remember that if you become famous you can never 
share the lot of those v^ho pass by unnoticed from the cradle 
to the grave, nor take part in the last heroism of their 
daily life; 

If you seek and encompass vrealth and ease the divine 
outlook of poverty cannot be yours — nor shall you feel all 
your days the loving and constraining touch of Nature and 
Necessity ; 

If you are successful in all you do, you cannot also battle 
magnificently against odds; 

If you have fortune and good health and a loving wife 
and children, you cannot also be of those who are happy 
without these things. 

Covet not overmuch. Let the strong desires come and 
go; refuse them not, disown them not; but think not that 
in them lurks finally the thing you want. 

Presently they will fade aw^ay and into the intolerable 
light will dissolve like gossamers before the sun. 



Do not hurry: have faith. 

The sportsman does not say, I will start a hare at the 
corner of this field, or I will shoot a turkey-buzzard at the 
foot of that tree; 

But he stands indifferent and waits on emergency, and 
so makes himself master of it. 

So do you stand indifferent, and by faith make yourself 
master of your life. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 163 

For all things are possible, yet at any one time and place 
only one thing is possible; 

And all things are good, yet at any one time and place 
can you extract the good only from that which is before you. 

Have faith. If that which rules the universe were alien 
to your soul, then nothing could mend your state — there 
were nothing left but to fold your hands and be damned 
everlastingly. 

But since it is not so — why what can you wish for more? 
— all things are given into your hands. 

Do you pity a man who having a silver mine on his estate 
loses a shilling in a crack in his house-floor? 

And why should another pity you ? 



3 

Do not hurry. 

As at the first day the clouds suffused with light creep 
over the edges of the hills, the young poplar poises itself like 
an arrow planted in the ground, the birds warble with up- 
turned bills to the sun ; 

The sun rises on hundreds of millions of human beings; 
the hemisphere of light follows the hemisphere of darkness, 
and a great wave of life rushes round the globe; 

The little pigmies stand on end (like iron filings under a 
magnet) and then they fall prone again. And this has gone 
on for millions of years and will go on for millions more. 

Absolve yourself to-day from the bonds of action. 
[Wait, wait ever for the coming of the Lord. See that 
you are ready for his arrival.] 

Begin to-day to understand that which you will not 



1 64 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

understand when you read these words for the first time, 
nor perhaps when you have read them for the hundredth 
time. 

Begin to-day to understand why the animals are not hur- 
ried, and do not concern themselves about affairs, nor the 
clouds nor the trees nor the stars — but only man — and he 
but for a few thousand years in history. 

[For it is one thing to do things, but another to be con- 
cerned about the doing of them.] 

Behold the animals. There is not one but the human 
soul lurks within it, fulfilling its destiny as surely as within 
you. 

The elephant, the gnat floating warily towards its victim, 
the horse sleeping by stolen snatches in the hot field at the 
plough, or coming out of the stable of its own accord at 
the sound of the alarm bell and placing itself in the shafts 
of the fire-engine — sharing the excitement of the men; the 
cats playing together on the barn floor, thinking no society 
equal to theirs, the ant bearing its burden through the 
grass — 

Do you think that these are nothing more than what you 
see? Do you not know that your mother and your sister 
and your brother are among them? 



I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul 
look out upon me. 

I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and 
fur, or condemned for awhile to roam fourfooted among 
the brambles. I caught the clinging mute glance of the 
prisoner, and swore that I would be faithful. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 165 

Thee my brother and sister I see and mistake not. Do 
not be afraid. Dwelling thus and thus for a while, ful- 
filling thy appointed time — thou too shalt come to thyself 
at last. 

Thy half-warm horns and long tongue lapping round my 
wrist do not conceal thy humanity any more than the learned 
talk of the pedant conceals his — for all thou art dumb we 
have words and plenty between us. 

Come nigh little bird with your half-stretched quivering 
wings — within you I behold choirs of angels, and the Lord 
himself in vista. 

Crooning and content the old hen sits — her thirteen chicks 
cheep cheerily round her, or nestle peeping out like little 
buds from under her wings ; 

Keen and motherly is her eye, placid and joyful her 
heart, as the sun shines warm upon them. 



Do not hurry: have faith. 

[Whither indeed should we hurry? is it not well here? 

A little shelter from the storm, a stack of fuel for winter 
use, a few handfuls of grain and fruit — 

And lo ! the glory of all the earth is ours.] 

The main thing is that the messenger is perhaps even now 
at your door — and to see that you are ready for his arrival. 

A little child, a breath of air, an old man hobbling on 
crutches, a bee lighting on the page of your book — who 
knows whom He may send? 

Some one diseased or dying, some friendless, outcast, 
criminal — 



i66 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

One whom it shall ruin your reputation to be seen with — 
yet see that you are ready for his arrival. 

Likely whoever It Is his coming will upset all your care- 
fully laid plans; 

Your most benevolent designs will likely have to be laid 
aside, and he will set you to some quiet commonplace busi- 
ness, or perhaps of dubious character — 

Or send you a long and solitary journey; perhaps he will 
bring you letters of trust to deliver — perhaps the prince 
himself will appear — 

Yet see that you are ready for his arrival. 

Is your present experience hard to bear? 

Yet remember that never again perhaps in all your days 
will you have another chance of the same. 

Do not fly the lesson, but have a care that you master it 
while you have the opportunity. 



These things I say not in order to excite thought in you 
— rather to destroy it — 

Or if to excite thought, then to excite that which de- 
stroys itself; 

For what I say Is not born of thought and does not de- 
mand thought either for comprehension or proof; 

And whoever dwells among thoughts dwells In the re- 
gion of delusion and disease — and though he may appear 
wise and learned yet his wisdom and learning are as hollow 
as a piece of timber eaten out by white ants. 

Therefore though thought should gird you about, remeni- 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 167 

ber and forget not to disendue it, as a man takes off his coat 
when hot; and as a skilful workman lays down his tool 
when done with, so shall you use thought and lay it quietly 
aside again when it has served your purpose. 



A veil of illusion hangs following the lines of all things, 

Over the trees and running waters, and up the sides of 
the mountains and over the sea and the cities, and circling 
the birds in the air as they fly — 

So that these themselves you see not, only the indica- 
tions of them, and yourself you see not, only the indication. 

As long as through the eyes of desire, and of this and 
that, you look — and of vanity; as long as you hurry after 
results and are overwhelmed with the importance of any- 
thing you can do or leave undone — so long will the veil lie 
close, do not be deceived. 

On all sides God surrounds you, staring out upon you 
from the mountains and from the face of the rocks, and of 
men, and of animals. 

Will you rush past for ever insensate and blindfold — 
hurrying breathless from one unfinished task to another, and 
to catch your ever-departing trains — as if you were a very 
Cain flying from his face? 

Resume the ancient dignity of your race, lost, almost for- 
gotten as it is. 

What is it surely that you are fretting about? Is it the 
fashions, or what men say about you, or the means of live- 
lihood, or is it the sense of duty this way and that, or 
trivial desires, that will not let you rest? 



1 68 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Are you so light, like a leaf, that such things as these will 
move you — are you so weak that one such slender chain will 
deprive you of inestimable Freedom? 

And yet the lilies of the field and the beasts that have 
no banks of deposit or securities are not anxious: they have 
more dignity than you. 

As long as you harbor motives so long are you giving 
hostages to the enemy; while you are a slave (to this and 
that) you can only obey. It is not You who are acting 
at all. 

Brush it all aside. 

Pass disembodied out of yourself. Leave the husk, leave 
the long long prepared and perfected envelope. 

Enter into the life which is eternal, pass through the gate 
of indifference into the palace of mastery, through the door 
of love out into the great open of deliverance; 

Give away all that you have, become poor and without 
possessions — and behold! you shall be lord and sovereign of 
all things. 

I Heard a Voice 

I HEARD a voice say unto me: — 
Now since thou art neither beautiful nor witty, it is 
in vain that thou hangest about the doors of the admired 
palaces ; 

For thou wilt not gain admission — thou ! 

But here outside is a plot of waste ground where canst 
build thee a little cabin — all thine own ; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 169 

And since it Is close by the common road and there Is no 
fence about it, 

Many a weary traveler parched with the heat of the day 
shall turn in unto thee for a cup of cold water : 

And that shall suffice for Thy life. 



I Know That You Are Self-Conscious 

I KNOW that you are self-conscious, 
That you are troubled — haunted — tormented. It is 
not pleasant! 

But how wonderful is the mere sense of space in the world 
— after the sick-chamber and days of illness! 

And how wonderful is the sense of measureless space in 
the soul, and of freedom, henceforth inalienable! 

Look then In the glass once more, and satisfy yourself 
thoroughly about it: 

Do you not see, this time, that there is some one else 
looking In it also 

Beside you, over your shoulder? 



w 



Who Are You 

HO are you who go about to save them that are lost? 
Are you saved yourself? 



Do you not know that who would save his own life must 
lose it? 
Are you then one of the "lost"? 



I70 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Be sure, very sure, that each one of these can teach you 
as much as, probably more than, you can teach them. 

Have you then sat humbly at their feet, and waited on 
their lips that they should be the first to speak — and been 
reverent before these children — whom you so little under- 
stand? 

Have you dropped into the bottomless pit from between 
yourself and them all hallucination of superiority, all flatu- 
lence of knowledge, every shred of abhorrence and loathing? 

Is it equal, is it free as the wind between you? 

Could you be happy receiving favors from one of the 
most despised of these? 

Could you be yourself one of the lost? 

Arise, then, and become a savior. 



Among the Ferns 

I LAY among the ferns, 
Where they lifted their fronds, innumerable, in the 
greenwood wilderness, like wings winnowing the air; 
And their voices went past me continually. 

And I listened, and lo! softly inaudibly raining I heard 
not the voices of the ferns only, but of all living creatures: 

Voices of mountain and star. 

Of cloud and forest and ocean. 

And of the little rills tumbling amid the rocks. 

And of the high tops where the moss-beds are and the 
springs arise. 

As the wind at mid-day rains whitening over the grass, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 171 

As the night-bird glimmers a moment fleeting between 
the lonely watcher and the moon, 
So softly inaudibly they rained, 
Where I sat silent. 

And in the silence of the greenwood I knew the secret 
of the growth of the ferns. 

I saw their delicate leaflets tremble breathing an unde- 
scribed and unuttered life; 

And, below, the ocean lay sleeping; 

And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in 
glad companionship for ever. 

And a voice came to me, saying: 

In every creature, in forest and ocean, in leaf and tree 
and bird and beast and man, there moves a spirit other 
than its mortal own. 

Pure, fluid, as air — intense as fire, 

Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits of all 
other creatures, drawing them close to itself. 

Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality; 

And this is the spirit of immortality and peace. 

And whatsoever creature hath this spirit, to it no harm 
may befall : 

No harm can befall, for wherever it goes it has its nested 
home, and to it every loss comes charged with an equal 
gain ; 

It gives — but to receive a thousand-fold; 

It yields its life — but at the hands of love; 

And death is the law of its eternal growth. 



172 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And I saw that was the law of every creature — that this 
spirit should enter in and take possession of It, 

That it might have no more fear or doubt or be at war 
within itself any longer. 

And lo! in the greenwood all around me it moved, 

Where the sunlight floated fragrant under the boughs, 
and the fern-fronds winnowed the air; 

In the oak-leaves dead of last year, and In the small shy 
things that rustled among them. 

In the songs of the birds, and the broad shadowing leaves 
overhead ; 

In the fields sleeping below, and In the river and the 
high dreaming air; 

Gleaming ecstatic it moved — with joy Incarnate. 

And it seemed to me, as I looked, that it penetrated all 
these things, suffusing them; 

And wherever it penetrated, behold! there was nothing 
left down to the smallest atom which was not a winged 
spirit Instinct with life. 

♦ * * 



Who shall understand the words of the ferns lifting their 
fronds innumerable? 

What man shall go forth Into the world, holding his life 
In his open palm — 

With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sunset — 

Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his 
enemies ? 

His heart like Nature's garden — that all men abide inr-* 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 173 

Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall, and the sun 

shines, 

And manifold growths come forth and scatter their 

fragrance? 

Who shall be like a grave, where men may bury 
Sin and sorrow and shame, to rise in the new day 
Glorious out of their grave? who, deeply listening. 
Shall hear through his soul the voices of all creation, 
Voices of mountain and star, voices of all men. 
Softly audibly raining? — shall seize and fix them, 
Rivet them fast with love, no more to lose them? 
Who shall be that spirit of deep fulfilment. 
Himself, self-centred? yet evermore from that centre 
Over the world expanding, along all creatures 
Loyally passing — with love, in perfect equality? 

Him immortality crowns. In him all sorrow 
And mortal passion of death shall pass from creation. 
They who sit by the road and are weary shall rise up 
As he passes. They who despair shall arise. 

Who shall understand the words of the ferns winnowing 
the air? 

Death shall change as the light in the morning changes; 
Death shall change as the light *twixt moonset and dawn. 



I 



I Heard the Voice of the Woods 

HEARD the voice of the woods and of the grass grow- 
ing silently and of the delicate bending ferns. 
And it said: 



174 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

For the dumb and for the generations of them that have 
no voice my speech is — 
For them too help comes. 

I am the spirit of the Earth. 

Round me the woods and mountains roll, rising and 
falling to the far sea; 

In the hollow below me roars the great river to its doom ; 

The clouds draw onward ; and the voices of the genera- 
tions of men are woven like thin gossamer through the air 
about me. 

Yet here where I am there is peace — such as mortal yet 
on earth hath hardly known, 

But which shall be known, and even now is known. 

Where the stems stand dividing the winnowed sunlight. 

Where the green floor is dappled with soft warm moss, 
and the swift hum of the bee is heard, 

And the air glides through like a gracious spirit inbreath- 
ing beauty, 

I walk — meditating the voiceless children, drawing them 
to myself with deep unearthly love. 

Come unto me, O yearning and inarticulate (for whom 
so many ages I have waited). 

Breathing your lives out like a long unuttered prayer, 

Come unto me: and I will give you rest. 

For I am not the woods nor the grass nor the bending 
ferns ; 

Nor any pale moonlight spirit of these; 

And I am not the air; 

Nor the light multitudinous life therein; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY i75 

Nor the sun and its radiant warmth ; 

But I am one who include — and am greater — 

One (out of thousands) who hold all these, embosomed, 

Safe in my heart: fear not. 

In your eyes deep-looking I will touch you so as to be 
free from all pain ; 

Where the last interpretations are, in the uttermost re- 
cesses, I will reach you; 

Utterance at length shall your pent-up spirit have, 

To pour out all that is in you — to speak and be not 
afraid. 

Dear brother, listen ! 

I am no shadow, no fickle versemaker's fiction, 

Many are the words which are not spoken, but here there 
is speech; 

Many are the words which are not spoken, but in due 
time all shall be spoken: 

There is neither haste nor delay, but all shall be spoken. 

Come up into the fragrant woods and walk with me. 

The voices of the trees and the silent-growing grass and 
waving ferns ascend; 

Beyond the birth-and-death veil of the seasons they ascend 
and are born again ; 

The voices of human joy and misery, the hidden cry of 
the heart — they too ascend into new perpetual birth. 

All is interpreted anew: 

In man the cataracts descend, and the winds blow, and 
autumn reddens and ripens; 

And in the woods a spirit walks which is not wholly of 
the woods, 



176 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

But which looks out over the wide Earth and draws to 
itself all men with deep unearthly love. 

Come, walk with me: 

On the soft moss — though you guess not my arm is 
about you — 

By the white stems, where the gracious air is breathing. 

On the green floor, through the pale green winnowed 
sunlight. 

Walk: and leave all to me. 



The Wind Chants Well To-day 

THE wind chants well over the world to-day; 
It runs in waves up the slopes of the corn-fields, and 
sounds deep and distant, like the sea, among the firs; 

The tall grasses in sheltered spots quiver on their wiry 
stems — for it is flowering time — 

And shake faint clouds of pollen upon the air. 

Strange purposes inhabit the woodland hollows and the 
high air to-day; 

The long-legged spider threading the blades of grass, 
touching trying retreating, encloses strange purposes, the 
wind encloses strange purposes. 

But I know you well O wind — you cannot escape me. 

You are very subtle, you have innumerable disguises: 

You are one thing to the grass with its beautiful hanging 
anthers and branched stigma, 

And another thing to the birds, and another to the sol- 
emn swaying fir-trees. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 177 

You conceal yourself well, O wind, but I am level with 
you to-day — you cannot hide yourself from me. 

I go arm in arm, I ride over the world with you. I visit 
a thousand spots and leave my messages — 

And am as invisible as you. 

I AM A Voice 

I AM a voice singing the song of deliverance — 
Centuries long, centuries long, floating aloft in ecstasy. 

Surprised at myself — to find myself looking out on this 
landscape here — to be engaged on these occupations and 
plans which people call mine, but which are not mine at all 
— to be living in this house which it is nothing to me 
whether I live in it or not — to be fretting myself with these 
and these anxieties and cares — to be this limited and foolish 
mortal that I am; 

Yet again at intervals soaring aloft, going back again to 
my home in the sky. 

To sing for all time 

The song of joy — of deliverance. 

O Sea, with White Lines of Foam 

OSEA, with white lines of foam caught by the winter 
sun, 
O pale blue transparent sky with wind, long stretches of 
coast faint-outlined, and waving grasses! 

How often to seek you, out of the pent life of custom and 
brick perspective, a boy I came, 

Filled with vague desires, hardly knowing what or where- 
fore — like thine, O restless sea and ceaseless blowing wind — 



178 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Came to pour forth my soul to yours, ye beautiful 
creatures — sad, sad, longing yearning without end! 

Say, great sea — whose music continues to-day the same 
as then; O wonderful illimitable sky, the same; O grasses 
shivering just for all the world as now — 

Say, have you not given me, by strange ways, the thing 
that I sought? 

For now returning, 

Satisfied, filled to the full of all desires, grateful as a 
lake sparkling in the sunshine, 

Filled to the full, desiring yearning no more — faint only 
with joy and the fragrance of the love which distils from 
you — 

Upon you I look once more. 

Changed are your words; changed are your words O 
grasses and pale blue flowing winds, and yours ye streets 
and faces that pass along them ! 

Changed are your words to me. 

I heard you — but it was as one that hears an unknown 
tongue; I thought I saw you, but I see that you deceived 
me. 

And now I do not know why I should ever make another 
move — what you say has entirely checkmated me. 

But to those that go forward, go ye ever forward be- 
fore them; and to them that listen let your strange vocabu- 
lary continue. 

Home 

AMONG all men my home Is: I have seen them and 
there Is no people, unto the ends of the earth, with 
whom I will not dwell. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY I79 

I give my body to the sea and to the dust — to be dashed 
on the rocks, or to break in green spray in springtime over 
the fields and hedge-rows — or to lie rotting in the desert 
for the sustenance of flies; 

My soul, if it be so, to peregrinate all creature-kingdoms 
and every condition of man — with equal joy the lowest; 

But I to return, to remain, to turn again to my old home, 
to dwell — as ever — where the prince of love once led me, 

When he touched the walls of my hut with his finger 
from within, and passing through like a fire delivered me 
with great unspeakable deliverance from all evil. 



Off Gaspe 

A FEW small huts, a narrow strip of cultivated land; 
Behind, the frowning mountains of Gaspe, forest- 
clad ; in front, the wide sea-mouth of the St. Lawrence. 

How lost and ignorant! says one passing by on board 
ship— wondering that life can be supported in such a place, 

So rude and so remote — no arts, no papers, telegrams 
— scarcely the ordinary commodities! 

The monotonous sea, the brief summer, the sullen forests, 
the scanty products of land and water, the occasional 
visits of the priest from over the mountains! 

A living death — he says. 

Yet here too — and in winter snow and ice — ^here too 
the human heart, not dead at all, just the same as in the 
midst of great cities, lives and blooms; 



i8o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Here lies close to the sky and the rocks, and the sea, 
and is at home — as the star is at home in the sky, and the 
daisy in the grass; 

Without communication with New York or London, 
and yet in the centre of the world as much as either, and 
with news and telegrams coming from a long way farther. 

human heart! 

Neither lost nor ignorant — living at first hand from 
thy source, 

1 perceive that thy home and mine are the same — one 
house though the doors be different. 

Not here or there; not here, O friend, in the centre 
of the world and there outcast and forlorn [rather outcast 
and forlorn and lost and ignorant he who thinks thus] — 
But ever at home — to thee greetings and congratulations 
and love wafted over the water, 

I send. 

A thousand gulls and guillemots on the calm sea-bosom 
in the flooding sun-warmth basking! 

This ship sailing for thee, like a sign through a gleam 
of summer — thou dwelling between the steep forests and 
the shore with joy in thy heart as I have! 



By the Shore 

ALL night by the shore. 
The obscure water, the long white lines of advanc- 
ing foam, the rustle and thud, the panting sea-breaths, the 
pungent sea-smell, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY i8i 

The great slow air moving from the distant horizon, the 
immense mystery of space, and the soft canopy of the clouds ! 

The swooning thuds go on — the drowse of ocean goes on : 
The long inbreaths — the short sharp outbreaths — the 
silence between. 

I am a bit of the shore: the waves feed upon me, they 
come pasturing over me; 

I am glad, O waves, that you come pasturing over me. 

I am a little arm of the sea: the same tumbling swoon- 
ing dream goes on — I feel the waves all around me, I 
spread myself through them. 

How delicious ! I spread and spread. The waves tumble 
through and over me — they dash through my face and 
hair. 

The night is dark overhead: I do not see them, but I 
touch them and hear their gurgling laughter. 

The play goes on! 

The strange expanding indraughts go on! 

Suddenly I am the Ocean itself: the great soft wind 
creeps over my face. 

I am in love with the wind — I reach my lips to its kisses. 

How delicious I all night and ages and ages long to spread 
myself to the gliding wind! 

But now (and ever) it maddens me with its touch: 
I arise and whirl in my bed, and sweep my arms madly 
along the shores. 

I am not sure any more which my own particular bit of 
shore is; 



i82 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

All the bays and inlets know me: I glide along in and 
out under the sun by the beautiful coast-line; 

My hair floats leagues behind me; millions together 
my children dash against my face; 

I hear what they say and am marvelously content. 



All night by the shore; 

And the sea is a sea of faces. 

The long white lines come up — face after face comes 
and falls past me — 

Thud after thud. Is it pain or joy? 
Face after face — endless! 

I do not know; my sense numbs; a trance is on me — I 
am becoming detached ! 

I am a bit of the shore: 

The waves feed upon me, they pasture all over me, my 
feeling is strangely concentrated at every point where they 
touch me; 

I am glad O waves that you come pasturing over me. 

I am detached, I disentangle myself from the shore; 
I have become free — I float out and mingle with the rest. 

The pain, the acute clinging desire, is over — I feel beings 
like myself all around me, I spread myself through and 
through them, I am merged in a sea of contact. 

Freedom and equality are a fact. Life and joy seem 
to have begun for me. 

The play goes on! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 183 

Suddenly I am the great living Ocean itself — the awful 
Spirit of Immensity creeps over my face. 

I am in love w^Ith It. All night and ages and ages long 
and for ever I pour my soul out to it In love. 

I spread myself out broader and broader for ever, that 
I may touch it and be with it everywhere. 

There is no end. But ever and anon It maddens me 
with Its touch. I arise and sweep away my bounds. 

I know but I do not care any longer which my own 
particular body is — all conditions and fortunes are mine. 

By the ever-beautiful coast-line of human life, by all 
shores, In all climates and countries, by every secluded nook 
and inlet, 

Under the eye of my beloved Spirit I glide: 

joy! for ever, ever, joy! 

1 am not hurried — the whole of eternity is mine; 
With each one I delay, with each one I dwell — with 

you I dwell. 

The warm breath of each life ascends past me; 

I take the thread from the fingers that are weary, and 
go on with the work; 

The secretest thoughts of all are mine, and mine are the 
secretest thoughts of all. 

* * * 

All night by the shore; 

And the fresh air comes blowing with the dawn. 

The mystic night fades — but my joy fades not. 

I arise and cast a stone into the water (O sea of faces 



1 84 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

I cast this poem among you) — and turn landward over the 
rustling beach. 



A Military Band 

WITH open mouths and eyes intent they press around 
the stand, 
A thousand listeners, in the flare of gas beneath the trees, 
Young men and bdys mostly, yet some older, and a few 
girls and women. 

The red-coats sit in circle round their leader — solid and 
robust — their lips retracted, taking short quick breaths, their 
throats full-veined and swollen ; 

The first cornets ring out wild and clear, backed by the 
ripienos, the tenors and the trombones; 

The euphonium takes its strong and leading part, the 
cry of the hautboy is heard — apart — like the cry of a 
wounded animal, the flutes and flageolets pipe merrily, and 
the drums resound. 

But the circle of faces — pale in the flickering gas — 
scarcely moves. 

Look! how intent they are, face after face, with eyes 
fixed, strained, as though they would pierce through brass 
and scarlet! 

What is it you fix so intently, O faces, have you never 
seen a red-coat before? 

But no, they hardly see the red-coats: though all eyes 
centre there they hardly see what is before them. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 185 

Lo! a great curtain hanging from the topmost sky right 
down to the bottom of creation — 

Flat, enormous, without rent, covering the whole world 
(yet hardly half-an-inch in diameter) — 

Before each listener it hangs, and on it all things are 
painted. 

Wonderful, figured all over from top to bottom, from 
side to side, wonderful wonderful — and for each one 
different : 

On it — for some — forms of lust displayed, the glory of 
limbs flame-girdled, floating from side to side, with fierce 
clutches of beauty — (O eyes no wonder you are intent!) 

On it — for some — the battle-field mounting in smoke, the 
flag, the roar, the appalling roar of faced cannon, the cer- 
tain death : the heroic the decisive the furious and disdainful 
act, the deathless figure of bravery — (O eyes no wonder 
you are intent!) 

On it — see here! — a maiden at her window, peeping over 
her flowers: the pure, the sweet, the stainless starlike face, 
for the vow of true knighthood only — (O eyes no wonder 
you are intent!) 

Lo there! even more beautiful, the face of year and year- 
long wife-hood: the friend, the trusted one without whom 
life cannot be imagined — dual love dividing and filling the 
universe — (O glistening eyes no wonder you are intent!) 

On it — Ah! these are the eyes of the lost one, the de- 
parted mother: the tender watchful beseeching eyes, the 
sacred light — not God himself more sacred; 

This is the glorious brow of comradeship, faithful un- 
alterable, to heroic deeds arousing; 

On it — here for this boy — scenes of the wild ocean and 



i86 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

adventure, the ship in a storm, the raft, the lightning, 
and the rescue; 

For another, ambition, the political arena, the debate, 
the crowded galleries, the centering of eyes; 

The footlights of the stage, the murmured delight of 
the audience, the enthusiastic encore; 

Scenes of travel, the lands of day-dreams and longing, 
the Andes, the Pacific, the Polar aurora and the ice, the 
trackless forests of Central America and Siberia and West- 
ern Australia, and of the Amazon; the wild animals of 
Central Africa; 

The ancient cities, the historical world-old sites, the 
birth-places of gods, the thrones of kings, the centres of 
civilisation, the churches, ceremonials, processions, pilgrim- 
ages, the markets, railroads, great feats of engineering; 

Faces, costumes, forms, objects innumerable — all these 
figured, arabesqued. 

Running in free lines over the curtain which hangs from 
the zenith to the nadir; 

And on it besides with the rest arabesqued and running. 

The band-stand with the scarlet and the brass, and the 
conductor energetic with his baton in the midst, and the 
swollen veins and lithe lips of the first cornet player; 

And on it running waved and dazzling the lines of gas 
against dark shade-masses of foliage — shot through with the 
electric scream of the flageolets and underborne with the 
deep thunder of drums; 

And on it the faint blue evening sky and the faint faint 
stars behind it. 

Wonderful, wonderful! 

I too look upon the curtain: I see the figures, the sym- 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 187 

bols, the shining hieroglyphs written with free hand across 
it — I see the sun and moon; 

I see the great dark background on which they are 
written — flat, enormous — falling from the zenith to the 
nadir. 

See! how it flaps and sways in the cool night-air, as if it 
were about to give way — surely there is something behind 
it! — yet no rent. 

Holding yet well together, holding your secret faithfully. 

Curtain of each soul, curtain of creation, tiny curtain, 
vast enveloping all the universe. 

Veil of the imperfect creature, under which the wings 
form — growing thinner momently and more transparent — 

Amnion-veil of the vast universe — growing thinner — 

O shot through with the scream of flageolets and under- 
borne with the deep thunder of drums! almost pierced with 
the fixed gaze and strain of innumerable eyes! 

Ah, wonderful wonderful! 

Gazed upon thousands of years, nearer nearer, fascinat- 
ing, drawing ever drawing multitudes towards it; 

Children sitting at a theatre thinking the drop-scene the 
real play itself — others older guessing somewhat how the 
matter stands — lights dimly seen moving behind, corners 
lifted or swaying; 

The Andes and Pacific dividing down their middle line, 
the vast forests disclosing in their depths, ancient cities 
blossoming like huge flowers and fading away in fragrance; 
the faint-blue star-spangled sky of evening rolling swiftly 
and noiselessly together, the round earth floating for a 
moment in the sunlight — and then gone, like the last patches 
of gold and blue on a soap-bubble; faces of brothers and 
sisters, faces of the speechless animals, opening back, myriads 



1 88 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

myriads of years back in perspective to him who sits upon 
the throne — 

Ah, wonderful wonderful! 

In the great dark of the night swaying floating like a 
flag which a gentle wind dwells among the folds of — 

Great mother Thou that foldest all creatures in thy 
folds— 

Whom to explore, the children traveling from ages and 
ages back, by long pilgrimages and routes labyrinthine ever 
pressing on, to decipher, to unravel, to read the words 
that are written : 

Once more and the stars shall fall showering from thee 
— the shining hieroglyphs shall fade; black for a moment 
thou shalt hang — then rolling swiftly together — 

Lo! what mortal eye hath not seen nor ear heard — 

All sorrow finished — the deep deep ocean of joy opening 
within — the surface sparkling — 

The myriad-formed disclosed, each one and all, all things 
that are, transfigured — 

Being filled with joy, hardly touching the ground, reach- 
ing cross-shaped with out-stretched arms to the stars, along 
of the mountains and the forests, habitation of innumerable 
creatures, singing joy unending — 

As the sun on a dull morning breaking through the clouds, 
so from behind the sun another sun, from within the body 
another body — these shattered falling — 

Lo! now at last or yet awhile in due time to behold that 
which ye have so long sought — 

O eyes no wonder you are intent. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 189 

Wings 

WINGS, wings! 
I beheld the young leaves breaking from the buds 
and poised on the tips of the branches; 

I saw a squadron of anemones in the meadows all wav- 
ing in the wind as impatient to take flight together; 

I looked at the acorn buried in the earth, and lo! it 
divided and put forth two seed-wings ; and the embryo plant 
resembled the penis and dual testicles of man and the 
animals ; 

And the starling like-shaped flew overhead through the 
trees, and the lark hung, a cross, in heaven; 

And the butterfly flew by — emblem of the soul — and the 
bee hung downwards in the wind-flower cup; 

And I stood by the hive in the garden and marked how 
from its lips the bees shot like arrows into the wide valley 
below ; 

And I stood in the great assembly and marked how from 
the decisive lips of the orator the winged words darted and 
transfixed the audience; 

And I saw on the Central American savannahs the half- 
wild horses racing and bounding together down to the rivers 
or resting in the shade of the trees; 

The light-footed tireless wolf I saw, and the eagle soaring 
over the mountains; and I watched the moth glide from 
the entrails of the caterpillar, and the gnat all perfect and 
stainless from its watery case ; 

And within myself and under the skin — deep down — I 
felt the wings of Man distinctly unfolding. 

And as I lay on the great hill-side the kisses of the sun 
alighted on me after their long flight, and rested; and the 



I90 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

birds warbled through the midday; and the flowers and 
the eaith itself and the great tree-boles sent forth their 
incense-swarms of atoms; 

And behold! beyond the mountains and the great clouds 
floating by I beheld dim vast and aerial the figure as of a 
man with arms outstretched over the universe; 

And as I gazed — lo! slowly all these other things swam 
with me and became incorporate with that figure, and the 
clouds floated and the streams ran down from ledge to 
ledge within it; 

And the trees with their square arms took on a new 
signification, and the little seeds with their twin cotyledons 
were for an emblem, and I saw whither the birds were 
hastening, and the direction of the index of all generation; 

And the starlings flew through the spaces of its thoughts, 
and the anemone squadrons trembled along its flanks; 

And the horses galloping over the plains could not 
escape the plains they galloped over, nor the light-footed 
wolf its quest; 

And the eagle could not deny its own form as it soared 
over the mountains — nor I the knowledge of that which 
was unfolding within me: 

And I understood the meaning of the wings. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 191 



On an Atlantic Steamship 

MID-OCEAN, night— 
The spars loom square and black against the sky, 
and the mast-head light sways slowly. 

I hear as in a dream the never-ending lullaby, the 
continued surge of water off the bows, the vibration and 
smothered pulse of the engines. 

Deep in the bowels of the great ship, half-naked huge- 
limbed grimy-eyed sweating, the firemen tend their thirty- 
six fires. 

From time to time one slips on deck to enjoy the cool; 

He lights his pipe. The moon along the high ridge 
of a pitch-black mass of cloud steals, peering over fitfully 
on the silent gulfs. 

The ship glides on and on. Oily-surfaced heaves and 
sways the deep as far as eye can see. 

Eight bells strike. The watch changes. 

One bell — two bells. The deck is almost deserted. And 
still the ship glides on and on — the deep sways slightly 
rustling ; 

The look-out man in the bows cries "All is well" — and 
the lamps are brightly burning. 

2 

In the morning as usual the deck is alive with passengers 



192 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

[The great ocean-plains swelling sparkling for hundreds, 
thousands, of miles round us, the visible circle unbroken 
by island or any object] — 

Of all nations languages degrees, of various habits trades 
traditions, 

Strangers to each other and to the water — they look 
with curious eyes upon the novel scene. 

An elderly Indian civilian, saloon-passenger, in grey check 
morning suit and tennis shoes, blameless and wealthy, looks 
down with curious eyes from the rail of the upper deck 
upon the crowded emigrant groups; 

He turns to draw the attention of the young lady stand- 
ing beside him. 

It is a strange and varied scene — the sparkling waters, 
the rigging and cordage, the children in red hoods playing 
on the sunny deck, the basking groups, some playing cards, 
some smoking, chatting — the silent companionless ones, 
pensive far-away-looking over the waves; 

The Irish, mostly sitting or reclining in knots, young 
and old, men and women, in gay colors, resting their heads 
on each other or wrapped in pairs under one shawl — ^joking 
laughing kissing screaming slapping; 

Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Norwegians, Laplanders, 
Swedes — some with red shirts and jack-boots, boys with 
concertinas and pipes, rosy Dutch girls, and mothers with 
tribes of children. 

Here walking up and down with their brother three 
English girls, fresh and bright as daisies — on their way to 
join their parents in the West; 

Here a little lady from Dublin with clear low voice sing- 
ing to a circle of companions; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 193 

There in a corner by himself unnoticed among the rest, 
in low musical chant by the hour reciting praying, sits an 
old Russian Jew. 

Greybeard, with veined forehead, a tailor by trade — 
his son-in-law has sent for him to Texas; 

Through Hamburg and Hull and Liverpool he has 
traveled, eating no Gentile food but dry bread. 

The Hebrew text lies before him — but he knows it by 
memory mostly; 

Prayers for the day he recites ["Abraham taught the 
morning prayer and Isaac the afternoon and Jacob the 
evening prayer"] — 

Prayers for the captain and for the crew and the pas- 
sengers and for all sea-travelers [''prayers for self alone God 
will not hear"] — 

Prayers against storm, shipwreck, disease and famine, 
and all dangers of the deep — not forgetting the warning of 
Jonah ; and for each man's ruach against the ruach of the 
ocean ; and against the changes of clime and time — 

All these he recites, sitting alone with his thoughts amid 
strangers. 

It is a strange and varied scene. 

The dark passion-eyed little Irish devil of a New York 
saloon-keeper with his blasphemous stories and unscrupulous 
confessions — takes it in from. his point of view; 

The long-headed long-twinkling-eyed elderly woman in 
her print hood, helpful and receptive, with broad mouth — 
en j oyer of jokes, not easily shocked — takes it in also from 
hers; 

The gold-miner with slouch hat and easy dress leans with 



194 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

his back against the bulwarks — he has seen it all twice 
before ; 

He has been home just now to Cornwall to visit his 
wife and children, and is off again to the mountains of 
Idaho. By his side stands his seventeen-year-old son, silent, 
clear-eyed, loving well his father. 

The cheerful elderly spinster brings her camp-stool on 
deck and chats to a companion — laughing hysterically over 
her own fears, and how she pushed against the side of her 
berth in the night when it was rough, to steady the rolling 
ship ! 

The American horse-dealer (he is bringing over some 
cart-horses from England) walks up and down — grey-eyed, 
with decisive chin and lips, easy careless sociable and 'cute. 

Under the awning aft by the saloon gangway an elderly 
and well-to-do matron and her two daughters recline in 
easy chairs; the lean grey-haired ship's purser, proud of his 
gentlemanly manners, stops as he passes to say a few words 
to them; 

And the ship glides on and on — the water breaks from 
the bows, 

The spars stand square and black against the sky, and 
the masts sway to and fro slowly. 



What a scene! 

Here in this hollow cup a thousand souls floating on 
the unmeasured deep — 

A little dust of humanity gathered at random on the 
shores of one continent, to be tossed at random to the 
winds of another. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 195 

The young clerk with wife and babe, from London, going 
out to try his fortune at farming in Manitoba: 

The great big-boned steerage steward, so kindly to the 
children and sensible — native of Rome, proud of his Latin 
origin, member of the Carbonari and imprisoned by Aus- 
trians in his time — now serving out treacle and bread and 
butter to emigrants; 

The spruce first-cabin waiters and brawny slipshod 
humored crew, 

The cooks, officers, the clean red-whiskered little captain 
on the bridge, the smug decent doctor, the oily-jacketed 
look-out behind his screen in the bows; 

The taking of observations at breakfast time and again 
at noon, the sun's limbs brought down to the horizon — the 
logarithms and tables, the charts and the log; 

The long heave and gasp of the engines, the gulls slow 
floating behind or darting after waste slops; 

The huge side of the ship, an iron wall 170 yards long 
to the waves, the flowers mirrors gilt and velvet of the 
saloon, the piano, the gossip, the elegant dinner, the mutual 
advances and recognitions, the parson who consents to read 
service on Sunday, the philanthropist interested in gutter 
children, the two self-possessed American girls, the young 
Englishmen doing the great tour; 

The bare sanded boards of the steerage cabins, the 
crowded emigrant meals, the swinging watercan and electric 
lamp, the stretched arms with mugs and plates ; 

The berths with hundreds of sleepers at night, the family 
groups during the day; 

The father, awkward and ox-like, with nine motherless 
children, caring for their little wants — the women pityingly 
helping him; 



196 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The narrow-eyed pale young basket-maker reading his 
Bible in his berth all day; the Lancashire laddie and his 
pals singing salvation-comics at meal-times; 

The military-got-up old fellow (years and years ago he 
was in the regulars) so clean and spruce — brushing his boots 
carefully every morning; the little boy of twelve traveling 
all by himself, petted by the cook and peeling potatoes for 
bits of dainties; 

The love-making, bible-reading, card-playing, singing — 
the women sewing or washing baby-linen ; 

The captain's cabin, with charts and glasses, the crew'>' 
quarters in the forecastle — men smoking in their bunks — 
the stoke-hole, the bar, the engine-room; 

The warm evenings with renewals of animation — 

Jingles of music in the cabins, hymns and comic songs 
and dances on deck to the accordion ; 

The inquisitive-eyed priest, the same that read the service, 
looking out from the saloon door — peering fleshly at tht 
better-looking boys and girls; 

At dusk the crew running among the women-passengers 
— firemen, cabin and deck-hands — fingering and fooling; 
the women enjoying; 

The incorrigible nigger cook's boy, with muscular de- 
veloped frame, protruding his great lips at the girls and 
then drawing them back with a grin showing huge rows of 
white teeth ; 

The mean pudding-faced Swedish lad and Irish woman 
spitting at each other — with no other language in common; 

The sickness, the smells, the refuse meat swept from 
floors and tables and thrown in bucketfuls overboard; 

The coarse half-smothered lust, the gluttony and waste 
of food; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 197 

And the great ship gliding on and on — in her course 
pointed by the earth-pole and the stars and the sun — 

The spars standing square and black against the sky, 
and the mast-head light swaying slowly. 



The evening before last the water was oily-calm, floating 
blue flecked with yellow up to the western horizon. 

Behind, the track of the great ship lay like white lace, 
with ridgy waves thrown off and rustling as they receded 
on each side; in the distance brooding the dappled clouds 
hovered 'twixt sky and sea — dove-color and grey and heavy 
with unformed rain. 

After sunset there was preaching and singing forward 
on deck. 

One or two ladies from the saloon distributed tracts, 
some from the steerage joined in praying, and called upon 
the Lord for safety during the voyage. 

Quite a little crowd got round, some earnest, some jeer- 
ing, some quiet spectators — (the cabin-boys mostly dancing 
in pairs round the corner in time to the hymns). 

All the while the great masts kept swaying slowly to 
and fro in the sky — as though never moving forward from 
their place — the huge vault rising enormous with dappled 
moonlit clouds in the east; 

While from the west the faint daylight still shone upon 
the worshipers, and the sound of their music melted and 
died on the vast sea-bosom. 

Later on, when the deck was almost deserted — All 
faintest dove-grey and silver, the gleaming water passing up 



198 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

without distinction into the gleaming sky, with moon behind 
the clouds — 

All one hue, in faintest silent perpetual movement, like 
no earthly scene, 

Immaterial, transfigured, the huge wash of ocean two 
miles deep lying so calm below — 

The moonlit ocean of air unsuspected above the clouds 
— suspended between — 

Gliding on and on, as in a mirror or a dream . , . 

All so calm, large, undisturbed, vast in extent and power: 
the sea stretching out to the touch of the air — miles, hun- 
dreds, thousands of miles — 

The sympathetic answer of the floating cloud-layer to 
the floating heaving water-layer below . . , 

I saw a vision of my own intimate passing out over the 
waters, and between them and the clouds — the vessel go- 
ing on and leaving us — 

Liberated, identified, all pain stript off and left with the 
husk behind — senses of enjoyment strangely widened, 
lifted— 

Moving on at will, passing along the waters, the slow 
air — catching the faint scent, the whispers, the coherent 
incoherent words, 

The marvelous calm, peace, grandeur, vastness, the in- 
communicable joy — 

Entering into it, and being at rest. 

5 

In the morning all was changed again. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 199 

Drizzly and grizzly chopped the grey water with leaden 
clouds and rain ; the horizon was a circle of mist ; 

Coldly and flabbily the passengers looked out upon the 
world. 

Sullen like a marble cliff just tinged with blue, a huge 
slab a quarter mile long and eighty feet rising over the 
water, 

Scored, festooned, beetling, with cavernous hollows 
washed by the sea, 

With mist trailing to leeward of It, and thin mist pass- 
ing over its white flat top, with white fragments dotting 
the sea around it — 

Sullen silent and lonely a great iceberg floated by. 

For a few minutes the passengers were roused, and 
crowded the side of the vessel — some of the firemen running 
up from the stoke-hole to have a look. 

But presently like bees stupefied with cold they dispersed 
to their cabins and to sleep, and the deck was clear again. 



To-day, bright and fresh, with new warmth, as it were 
wafted from the approaching land — all is gay and cheerful. 

The deep inky-blue of mid-ocean yields to a lighter tint, 
and the waves break merrily into flashes of turquoise light 
crowned with foam. 

Six narrow-winged gulls pass by — flying low, serpentine 
— hunting across the water; 

Every now and then shoals of porpoises appear — hundreds 
at a time — playing splashing swimming alongside, towards 



200 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the wind, leaping half-a-dozen together out of the water — 

[Bounding three or four yards, with evident enjoyment 
and commotion at the sight of the ship — their sharp back 
fins and divided horizontal tails plainly visible ;] 

Then a whale is seen spouting, or a fleet of Portuguese 
men of war drifts by, rose-color and blue — or a real ship 
is sighted and spoken with. 

So the day speeds on ; and pleasant is basking on the sunny 
deck, and pleasant the new companionships and the confi- 
dences; and the food tastes sweet, and the air has a breath 
of land in it, as of most distant hayfields; and hope and 
expectation range high ; 

And the evening falls, and late on into the warm night 
the clustered wanderers on the fore-deck sing the songs of 
the old country. 

While the spars loom square and black against the 
stars, and the mast-head light sways slowly. 



By Lake Wachusett 

THE night-breeze murmurs odorous through the wild 
chestnuts where Lake Wachusett lies embowered in 
trees ; 

The moon shines over the mountains not other than 
when the wild man walked them; 

The crickets and frogs cry shrill, the bull-frog twangs 
his bass, and the firefly shines fitful among the bushes ; 

While solitary in his boat the fisher is known by his 
lamp gleaming over the water. 

Murmured as in a dream I catch the import of creation. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 201 

Like a far-off sound which the attentive listener mistakes 
not: 

Through the chirruping of the crickets and high fluting of 
the frogs, through the lull of the breeze and the voice of the 
fisherman singing across the lake — through the calls of the 
Indians faintly lingering still among the laurel and pine 
tangles — 

Through the face of the moon leaning down from the 
sky, and the fitful bird-eluding flash of the firefly — 

Nay, through the remembered faces and calls of the city, 
and all sights and sounds — 

Still I catch the old old theme, the theme of birth and 
deliverance. 

Tremble on O breeze overhead, tremble O prince of love, 
with thy wings the whole universe overshadowing, 

Calling Thou from their hidden dwelling-places the souls 
of men to their deliverance: 

Where they lie hidden in the waters calling, or fitful 
in the air flashing — or in all strange elusive forms hiding 
vainly their birth-marks, yet by Thy voice discovered; 

Where by the solitary lamp upon the lake, after trout and 
pickerel, or upon the pavements of cities, or with the moon 
through the mild night, or on the gleaming water-surfaces 
with cool gurgling throats — 

Eluding, grotesque — still to thy voice they answer un- 
witting. 

Tremble on O breeze glittering dissolving all things 
transparent — tremble O prince of love with thy wings all 
things overshadowing: 



202 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Calling invoking out of chaos, out of the mad jumble 
and whirligig of the world, through all destinies and forms 
and long agelong preparations — 

Souls winged and equipped for freedom. 



O Mighty Mother 

O MIGHTY Mother — In silence receive thy child. 
Weary, fainting, having traveled far and forsaken 
thee, having undertaken burdens too great to be borne — 
Atlas of griefs and sorrows, well nigh borne down be- 
neath the load — 

Thy foolish child, wandering afar from thee, yet led by 
what divine madness? — 
O mighty Mother receive. 

Never again to stray. 

Having circled the globe, having completed the many- 
thousand-year-long round which thou secretly appointedst 
for me — 

Through what mystifications troubles delays, what re- 
turning on old tracks, what torments and inward suffering 
(thou knowest best) — 

What entanglements and illusions — 

mighty Mother receive! 

Outcast and friendless (for that was my necessary doom) 
and homeless on the verge of creation I first knew myself 
— sorrow was the wall which divided me from thee. 

1 beheld thee afar and knew thee not; I was a prisoner 
and guessed not that I was in prison. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 203 

But now at thy feet — thanks, thanks. 

Pouring out my soul in gratitude to thee — thy child 
so foolish, to Thee, dear mother: 

Whilst thou one by one disentanglest the loaded heavy 
chains which I have dragged so far — 

(One by one, for not all at once will they come off, 
and fast and eating into my flesh are they riveted) — 

At thy feet I sit and sing, knowing thou hast sworn to 
give me Freedom. 

Ages shall my song last, for not all at once can I dis- 
burden myself; 

Ages will I sing for joy — warbling in thy presence — as 
the birds to the risen sun; 

Then at last arising Thou mother shalt take me by 
the hand; we will leave the earth, and thou shalt learn me 
to fly through heaven. 



AFTER LONG AGES 



2o6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



After Long Ages 
Tired child, on thy way to Paradise: 

Does the path seem long? Rest here and let us beguile 
a few moments. 

Rest here J in mortal form Thou that I see advancing-^ 
Child of sin and sorrow and suffering rest close here. 

Hast thou heard faintly between the clouds in the ever' 
lasting blue the music of voices and of wingsf Hast thou 
gazed deep into the eyes of the animals? 

Hast thou silent in the great secret caverns of thy own 
heart heard the awful footsteps of thy Lover advancing? 

Be at peace. Fear not. Behold, thou shalt conquer all 
evil. 

Clouds of gloom shall wrap thy soul; the long days 
without grace shall weary thee; the voice of whom thou 
lovest shall speak to thee as of old no more. 

Be at peace. Fear not. Behold, thou shalt conquer all 
evil. 

Turn, lift up thine eyelids, to me, beautiful one; clear 
away the shadows of the lashes from those liquid deeps; 

Turn full-orbed thy gaze against mine. Fear not. Serene 
serene as heaven is all that is between us. 

Who is it that I see sitting at her lattice window — far 
down those liquid deeps f 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 207 

Who is it the voice of whose singing comes borne to me 
like the sound of a voice across the far seaf 

What is this figure, dear child, that I see moving so 
?nysteriously in those depths — 

Vague-outlined, hinted, as of one moving behind a curtain? 

Lo! the caged one, the solitary prisoner feeling around the 
walls of her prison! 

Lo, the baffled beaten and weary soul! lo, the crowned 
and immortal god! 



After long ages resuming the broken thread — coming 
back after a long but necessary parenthesis, 

To the call of the early thrush in the woods, and of 
the primrose on the old tree-root by the waterside — 

Up with the bracken uncurling from the midst of dead 
fronds of past selves: 

As of morning, and to start again after long strange 
slumber and dreams. 

Beholding the beautiful light, breathing the dainty sweet 
air, the outbreath of innumerable creatures, 

Seeing the sun rise new upon the world as lovers see 
it after their first night, 

All changed and glorified, the least thing trembling with 
beauty — all all old sights become new, with new meanings — 

Lo! we too go forth. 

The great rondure of the earth invites us, the ocean- 
pools are laid out in the sunlight for our feet. 



2o8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

For now, having learned the lesson which it was neces- 
sary to learn, of the intellect and of civilisation — 

Having duly taken in and assimilated, and again duly 
excreted its results — 

Once more to the great road with the animals the trees 
and the stars traveling to return — 

To other nights and days undreamt of in the vocabu- 
laries of all dictionaries 



I inevitably call you. 



II 



Calm and vast stretches the sea as at the first day, in 
sheets of blue and white; a light ground-swell sends the 
transparent wash over a bank of shingle, where it lies in 
pools along the water's edge. 

A lug-sailed fishing boat drifts lazily with the tide, and 
then comes to anchor in the glaze; three or four porpoises 
show their backfins, oscillating as they pass; 

While to the westward, far in the haze, phantom-like 
and large with the early sun on their sails, two square- 
rigged brigs glide on. 

The chrysanthemums stand crowded in the cottage garden 
— and the ships glide on and on in the offing; 

The low sun sends his light Streaming over the world, 
and glows amid the myriad salmon-pink petals tipped with 
yellow. 

Ho! the sweet autumnal air! the cool green leaves 
thick-waving ! 

O earth, naked in love, bulging sunwards, with rosy 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 209 

fingers clasped about your head, and feet at the opposite 
pole, 

Smiling and proud and with raised head I see you glance 
at your own beautiful body — at the sea, at the ships, at 
the star-shaped flowers of autumn ; 

Smile for smile unashamed you return to greet the glances 
of your lord. 

But when night comes and the stars appear, 

Pensive, unobserved, up on one arm raising yourself, 
lo! now I see you gaze abroad in solemn wonder; 

For a new life moves within you — yet what to be you 
divulge not. 



Ill 



Well-folded for man waits the word for which so many 
ages he waits ; not one moment before its due time is it 
spoken. 

The runnels of water tinkle downwards towards the sea; 

Calling to their cattle over the hills the voices of the 
herdsmen sound very musically through the still air; from 
afar and down the galleries of Time come the sounds of 
all mortal occupations ; 

The axe rings hollow among the woods ; high in great 
quarries facing the sun is heard the click of chisels and 
the helter-skelter of falling stone ; the hammers of the 
riveters echo along the shipyards of numberless shores; 

The great promontories stand out mute over the sea ; 
not one moment before their due time do they speak; 

And the ships glide past them to the coasts of all lands, 
the winged thoughts of the voyagers circle the globe. 



2IO TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Well-folded and concealed the purpose of the earth waits: 
innumerable are the arguments of the little creatures that 
run about on it; wonderful their designs, exemplary their 
tenacity; but this purpose puts all the arguments and de- 
signs aside in time — it overpowers and convinces the most 
tenacious. 

[For all creatures that are on the earth have different 
designs, and their arguments and actions war against and 
destroy each other; 

But if thou canst in thyself open the door to that pur- 
pose which all fulfil alike, then shalt thou be free from 
the bonds of action and of argument, and shalt be absolved 
from that time forward.] 

IV 

Sweet are the uses of Life. 

The house is wreathed with holly boughs at Christmas; 
the shining holly — the smooth-leaved — out of the woods 
nods to the sparkling eyes of the children as they dance; 

The candles are darkened, and they stand round the 
dragon-fire in the bowl, hushed, large-eyed, in the livid and 
flickering light. 

The sun rises magnificent in winter upon the vast con- 
cave of air — level bars of mist lie in the hollows; firs and 
evergreens adorn the bare and silent woodlands. 

The horse in the stable purrs at the sound of the 
tread of his master, and turns his beautiful head, as much 
as to say, Why are you so late with my breakfast? He 
paws impatiently while his feed is being prepared. 

Towards the city along all the roads in the early light 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 211 

the workers converge. They take wafts of the fresh morn- 
ing with them to their work. Sorrow and joy accompany 
them and share their meals in the everyday old haunts. 

In the house a Stranger waits for the children ; he stands 
by in the dark and leans over them and watches their faces, 
as they watch the dancing blue flame; 

He moves along the roads unseen, and waits in the great 
city, and in the woods at early dawn he waits. None but 
the woodman and He see the thin waned moon arising 
with stars in pale and silent beauty before the sun. 

Sweet are the uses of Life. 

The Stranger glides to and fro; hours and centuries and 
thousand-year stretches he waits. 

Among the children of mankind he waits. He too takes 
his place with the rest; he is a king, a poet, a soldier, a 
priest, a herdsman, a fig-picker, a pariah. 

It is indifferent: he sees all and passes with all — ^joy sur- 
rounds him wherever he is. 

He sees the down-trodden and outcast; he sees the selfish 
and tyrannical — he looks them right in the face but they 
do not see him; 

He sees the patient and heroic; but he utters no word 
either of praise or blame. 

The tall ash-shoots aspire in the hedge-rows; the trees 
lift innumerable fingers towards the sky, the brooks run 
downward unceasingly, atoms that have remained for thou- 
sands of years sealed in the rocks arise and pass beyond the 
boundaries of the earth and go voyaging through space; 



212 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

All else hastens onward towards some unknown accom- 
plishment — unerring ; 

He waits secure, and sings the songs of praise. 

The morning and the evening are his song, and the land 
and the sea are the words of it, and the voices of all crea- 
tion heard in silence are the perpetual offering of it. 

He needs not to arise, nor to go hither and thither — 
all is finished and perfect. 

What he desires, what he alone dreams of, that all 
mortal things through all time and space never-ceasingly 
occupy themselves to perform. 

His fingers, as he sits at ease among the other children, 
are the myriad sunbeams and the thicksown stars and the 
innumerable blades of grass; 

The winds are his messengers over all the world, and 
flames of fire his servants; the icebergs break from their 
northern shores, the southern lands clothe themselves with 
green and yellowing crops, and the clouds float over the 
half -concealed dappled and shaded Earth — to fulfil his will, 
to fulfil his eternal joy. 



Sweet are the uses of Life. 

The morning breaks again over the world as a thousand 
and a million times before; 

The light flows rippling in, and up to the window-pane, 
and passes through and touches the eyelids of the sleeper. 

It says: "Come forth, I have something to show you." 
And the sleeper arises and goes forth — and everything 
is the same as yesterday. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 213 

Then he says to the light, "You have deceived me, there 
is nothing new here" — so he goes back sullenly to his 
chamber. 

But the light is not huffed, but comes again next morn- 
ing (thinks nothing of the long journey across) and slips 
through the v^^indow-pane and touches the sleeper's eyelids 
as before, ''Come forth, I have something to shovi^ you"; 

And again the next morning, and the next, and the 
next. 

And the sleeper w^onders whatever the light would be 
at, but the latter says nothing — only fails not to keep his 
self-made appointment. 

Then after many years^ after many thousands of years — 

After many times lying down to sleep and rising again, 
after many times entering again into the mother's womb, 
after often passing through the gates of birth and death — 
the sleeper says to him that awakes him : 

"Ah ! beautiful one, ah ! prince of love, so many times 
with thy fingers in vain touching my closed lids! 

Now at last thy love pouring in upon me has found 
an entrance, and filling my body breaks the bounds of it, 
and bursts forth back again into the regions whence thou 
comest. 

Ah! prince of love, lord of heaven, most beautiful one, 
of thee I am enamored and overcome with love; 

Beholding thy beauty, hearing the words that thou 
sayest to me, being touched with the nearness of thy breath 
and the divine odor which exhales from thee — being sick, 
constrained with love, rending the chains which detain me — 

Henceforth the long chain of births and deaths I abandon, 
I arise and go forth with thee — to begin my real life." 



214 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

VI 

Sweet are the uses of Life. 

The woodstacks stand In the woods, and the ground 
is strewn with chips amid the fluttering anemones; the 
woodman downs his felling axe and lifts the beer-can to 
his lips; 

The sweat streams in his face and beard, the sun-warm 
odor of the pines is wafted, and the bee booms through 
the clearing. 

At night, ready for the alarm bell of fire, round their 
table in the engine-room smoking and playing cards the 
firemen sit; preparing for sleep the innocent girl rose-bud 
pats and smooths her hair admiringly in the glass. 

Sweet are the uses, sweet the calls; 

Out of the glass which is ever opposite peers a face 
which is not to be denied ; 

The flame leaps up behind the city roofs, the beer in 
the can stretches out like a lake among the trees before the 
thirsty drinker, the table is spread for the hungry with 
delicious viands; 

The tongue presses gently the palate, the freshly run- 
ning blood leaps and pulses like a brook through the arteries, 
the swarming millions in it dance past the Stranger who 
sits upon the banks; 

Fresh comes the call each morning; (who knows whether 
now or when he will arise?) 

The deed of daring calls, ambition calls, revenge and 
hatred call; the sun calls peeping over the mountains in 
the morning, the stars call glancing in at the windows at 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 215 

night, the myriad dancing sights and sounds call, weaving 
their magic circle as of old ; 

Hardly can he resist the fetch ; he is drawn forth whether 
he will or no; 

The primrose on the tree-root calls, love calls glancing 
from eyes of depth unfathomed ; 

Sexual lusts and cravings call — sweet fever for other 
flesh which nought else will satisfy, 

Bruised bitter-sweet passion, determined and desperate 
falling swooned and breathless on beloved lips and limbs. 

« « « 

VII 

Centuries long in her antechambers tarrying, 
Lost in strange mazes, wandering, dissatisfied — in sin and 
sorrow, lonely despised and fallen — 
At length the soul returns to Paradise. 
(O joy! the old burden, passing words!) 

The humble bee among the currant blooms hangs cen- 
turies long suspended ; the lark still carols a mere speck 
in the sky. 

Centuries long in her antechambers tarrying, 
Lost in strange mazes, wondering dissatisfied, 
Out of the windows peering wondering longing, 
Following the shadowy angel — by others unseen — that 

comes and beckons. 

Leaving all, leaving house and home, leaving year-long 

plans and purposes, ease and comfort, 



2i6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Leaving good name and reputation and the sound of 
familiar voices, untwining loved arms from about her neck, 
yet tvi^ining them closer than ever — 

Through the great gates, redeemed, liberated, suddenly 
in joy over the whole universe expanding — after her many 
thousand year long exile, 

At length the soul returns to Paradise. 

Cinderella the cinder-maiden sits unbeknown in her 
earthly hutch; 

Gibed and jeered at she bewails her lonely fate; 

Nevertheless youngest-born she surpasses her sisters and 
endues a garment of the sun and stars, 

From a tiny spark she ascends and irradiates the uni- 
verse, and is wedded to the prince of heaven. 

VIII 

O let not the flame die out! 

Hitherto with wayward feet, in ignorance as a child, 
with sweet illusions and shows like dancing fireflies, and 
hopes and disappointments, have you been led on ; 

Henceforth putting these aside, as coming of age and 
to your inheritance, deliberately looking before and after 
you shall measure your undertaking and your powers. 

For as a traveler beholds a snow mountain on the distant 
verge, beautiful, with inexpressible longings through the hot 
summer air — so as belonging to another world shall you 
behold from afar the signal of the goal of your wanderings; 

Rising, falling, lost in thickets wildernesses deserts, the 
untrodden summit shall yet gleam on you — its beauty shall 
never be forsaken of your love. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 217 

O let not the flame die out! 

Cherished age after age in its dark caverns, in Its holy 
temples cherished/ 

Fed by pure ministers of love, 
Let not the flame die out! 

Within thy body I behold it flicker, 

Through the slight husk I feel the quick fire leaping — 

Let not the flame die out! 

Send forth thy ministers for fuel. 

Send forth the sight of thine eyes and the reaching of 
thy hands and the wayward stepping of thy feet, 

Teach thy ears to bring thee and thy tongue to speak — 
labor, and spend all that thou hast for love; faint not: be 
faithful. 

Cast at last thy body, thy mortal self, upon it, and let 
it be consumed ; 

And behold! presently the little spark shall become a 
hearth-fire of creation, and thou shalt endue another gar- 
ment — woven of the sun and stars. 

Cinderella the cinder-maiden sits unbeknown in her 
earthly hutch: 

Love sees her once and rests no more till he has rescued 
and redeemed her. 

IX 

O laughter, laughter! 

Shake out O clouds and winds your hidden words over 
the earth — and you ye meadows rejoice with innumerable 
daisies ! 



21 8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

All the songs and hymns of creation from the first day, 
all the carols of the birds and choiring of the sun and stars 
in the limpid and boundless aether! 

What sang and fluttered in the leaves, and was heard 
between the clouds in the blue; 

What poured itself out in sorrow and was exhaled in 
death, stumbling on in the dark over stocks and stones — 

Weary and bruised yet faithful, determined and un- 
daunted. 

To become as that which is ever the same as itself, 
entering into the inheritance of beauty, the great veil 
lifted— 

Beholding the original of all the things which move 
outside, the company of the immortal hosts, the rose of 
glory, radiant behind all mortal things — 

Overcome, blinded with splendor, falling trembling on 
the threshold — 

The long long journey is accomplished! 



That day — the day of deliverance — shall come to you 
in what place you know not; it shall come but you know 
not the time. 

In the pulpit while you are preaching the sermon, be- 
hold ! suddenly the ties and the bands — in the cradle and the 
coffin, the cerements and swathing-clothes — shall drop off. 

In the prison One shall come; and the chains which are 
stronger than iron, the fetters harder than steel, shall dis- 
solve — ^you shall go free for ever. 

In the sick-room, amid life-long suffering and tears and 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 219 

weariness, there shall be a sound of wings — and you shall 
know that the end is near — 

[O loved one arise! come gently with me; be not too 
eager — lest joy itself should undo you.] 

In the field with the plough and chain-harrow; by the 
side of your horse in the stall ; 

In the brothel amid indecency and idleness and repairing 
your own and your companions' dresses; 

In the midst of fashionable life, in making and receiving 
morning calls, in idlesse, and arranging knicknacks in your 
drawing room — even there, who knows? — 

It shall duly, at the appointed hour, come. 

Ask no questions : all that you have for love's sake spend ; 
For as the lightning flashes from the East to the West, 
so shall the coming of that day be. 

All tools shall serve — all trades, professions, ranks, and 
occupations. 

The spade shall serve. It shall unearth a treasure beyond 
price. 

The stone-hammer and the shovel, the maul-stick and 
palette, the high stool and the desk, the elsin and the 
clamms and the taching ends, the whipping-lines and swingle- 
tree, will do; 

To make a living by translating men's worn-out coats 
into boys' jackets — that also will do. 

The coronet shall not be a hindrance to its wearer; 
the robes of office shall not detain the statesman ; lands, 
estates, possessions, shall part aside for him who knows how 
to use them ; he shall emerge from the midst of them, free. 

The writer shall write, the compositor shall set up, the 



220 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

student by his midnight lamp shall read, a word never 
seen before. 

The railway porter shall open the carriage door and 
the long expected friend shall descend to meet him. 

The engine-driver shall drive in faith through the night. 
With one hand on the regulator he shall lean sideways and 
peer into the darkness — and lo! a new signal not given in 
the printed instructions shall duly in course appear. 

The government official shall sit in his pigeon-holed den, 
the publican shall recline on his couch in the back-parlor, 
the burglar shall plan his midnight raid, the grocer's boy 
shall take the weekly orders in the kitchen, the nail-maker 
shall put his rod back in the fire and take a heated one 
out in its place; 

The delicate-bred girl shall walk the correct thing in her 
salmon-pink silk slashed with blue; the sempstress shall 
sit in her bare attic straining the last hour of daylight — 
and by every stitch done in loyalty of heart shall she sew for 
herself a shining garment of deliverance. 

The mother shall wear herself out with domestic duties 
and attending to her children ; she shall have no time to 
herself, yet before she dies her face shall shine like heaven. 

The Magdalen shall run down to answer the knock at 
the door, and Jesus her lover himself shall enter in. 



XI 



Where the Master is there Is paradise. 
I know that nothing else shall satisfy you — nothing else 
has any real sense at all. 

In the antechamber of the body It is vain to tarry ; among 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 221 

the forms that belong to it and are painted upon its walls 
— beautiful as they all without one exception are — you 
shall look in vain for the master. 

In the antechamber of the intellect (important as it is) 
it is vain to tarry; systems and philosophies, plans and 
purposes, proofs and arguments, shall please you for a time; 
but in the end they shall only contradict and destroy each 
other. 

In the antechamber of art and morality (important as 
they are) you shall not tarry overlong. Here also as in 
the other chambers though you see the footsteps of the 
Master you shall not behold him face to face. 

The trees grow in the Garden, but they are not the 
same as the Lord of the Garden: out of them by them- 
selves come only confusion and conflict and tangling of 
roots and branches. 

This is the order of Man and all History. 

Descending he runs to and fro over the world, and dwells 
(for a time) among things that have no sense; 

Forgetful of his true self he becomes a self-seeker among 
shadows. 

But out of these spring only war and conflict and tangling 
of roots and branches; 

And things which have no sense succeed things which 
have no sense — for nothing can have any sense but by rea- 
son of that of which it is the shadow, and one phantasmal 
order follows another, and one pleasure or indulgence an- 
other, and one duty or denial another — 

Till, bewildered and disgusted, finding no rest, no peace, 
but ever)rwhere only disappointment, 



222 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

He returns (and History returns) seeking for that 
which is. 

Toilsome and long is the journey; shell after shell, en- 
velope after envelope, he discards. 

Over the mountains, over the frowning barriers, un- 
daunted, unwrapping all that detains him, 

Enduring poverty, brother of the outcast and of animals, 
enduring ridicule and scorn. 

Through vast morasses, by starlight and dawn, through 
dangers and labors and nakedness, through chastity and 
giving away all that he has, through long night-watches on 
the mountains and washings in the sunlit streams and 
sweet food untainted by blood, through praises and thanks 
and joy ascending before him — 

All all conventions left aside, all limitations passed, all 
shackles dropped — the husks and sheaths of ages falling off — 

At length the Wanderer returns to heaven. 

Then all those things which have vainly tried to detain 
him — 

When He comes who looks neither to the right nor the 
left for any of them. 

Not being deluded by them but rather threatening to 
pass by and leave them all in their places just as they are — 

Then they rise up and follow him. 

Though thorns and briars before, in his path they now 
become pleasant fruits and flowers, 

[Not till he has put them from him does he learn the 
love that is in them;] 

Faithful for evermore are they his servants — and faithful 
is he to them — 

And this world Is paradise. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 223 

XII 

Therefore I say unto you : Faint not ; 

Rest here awhile and forgive my foolish prating; 

Turn from these words and look again at the world 
around you, the work you have to do. 

Not for one year or two; 

Not for a whim or a passing passion, or for after jealousies 
and recriminations, but for something more — 

Something to grow in other spheres and to be more pre- 
cious than the casket which contains it — 

For sovereignty and freedom and the life which Is not 
seen, do we exchange the ancient language of creation. 

And I conjure you, if you would understand me, to 
crush and destroy these thoughts of mine which I have 
written In this book or anywhere; 

And my body (if It should be our destiny to meet m 
battle) I conjure you faithfully to destroy — nor be afraid — 
as I will endeavor to destroy yours: so shall you liberate 
me to dwell with you. 

Spare not, respect not, believe not anything that I have 
written. Rest not till you have ground it to smallest meal 
between your teeth. 

And, looking me in the face, accept not anything that 
I do or say — for It does not call for acceptation. 

Me alone, when you have separated and rejected all 
these, shall you see and not reject. 

XIII 

What else (than this) are the dreams of all people and 
of eras and ages upon the earth? 



224 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

What else are the glowing dreams of boyhood, and the 
toys of age, and the promises floating ever on before — dim 
mirages to wayworn travelers? (faint not, O faint not!) 

What else the sound of Christmas hymns across the 
snow — the tender and plaintive songs of centuries, dreams 
of the Better Land — coming down from before all history? 

What the obstinate traditions of races and explorations 
by sea and land ; the instinct of the chase ; searches for 
the Earthly paradise, Utopias of social reformers, Eldorados 
and fabled Islands, stirrings of adventure and conquest ; 
pilgrimages, myths, and the tireless quest of the Sangreal? 

The unquenchable belief in the elixir of life and the 
philosopher's stone; the feverish ardor of modern science, 
like a dog with its nose on the trail? 

What else the marvelous dreams of the little creatures 
walking the earth — the dreams of religion — the skies peopled, 
and the vast cosmogonies of the gods, the huge and im- 
pending Otherworld, the mystic scroll of the Zodiac? 

The dim-lit chambers of rock-temples and pyramids and 
cathedrals — the ark, the host, and the holy of holies? 

The proclamations and gospels of all lands, the giving 
of fire from the mosque at Jerusalem, the lighting of in- 
numerable candles; the far-away songs of the priests by 
the Nile-strand, standing by the empty sarcophagus with the 
words, ''Osiris is risen" ; the midnight naked dances of 
the Therapeutse upon the sands, the processions of salvation 
armies and revivalists? 

The daily life of each man and woman, the ever expected 
Morrow, the endless self-seeking, the illusive quests (faint 
not, O faint not!), the bog-floundering after fatuous wisps, 
the tears disappointments and obstinate renewals of hope — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 225 

All routes and roads and the myriad moving of feet 
to and fro over the earth — 

What are they but Transparencies of one great fact — 
symbols of the innumerable paths 

By which the soul returns to paradise? 

XIV 

I BEHELD a vision of Earth w^ith innumerable paths. 
I saw the faces that go up and down — the world that 
each carries within. 

I heard the long roar and surge of History, wave after 
wave — as of the never-ending surf along the immense coast- 
line of West Africa. 

I heard the world-old cry of the down-trodden and 
outcast: I saw them advancing always to victory. 

I saw the red light from the guns of established order 
and precedent — the lines of defence and the bodies of the 
besiegers rolling in dust and blood — yet more and ever more 
behind! 

And high over the inmost citadel I saw magnificent, 
and beckoning ever to the besiegers, and the defenders ever 
inspiring, the cause of all that never-ending war — 

The form of Freedom stand. 

XV 

I beheld a vision of Earth with innumerable paths; 

And I saw, going up and down, the world-old faces of 
humanity — whom neither race nor clime nor time greatly 
alter; 



226 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Through barbarisms and civilisations, through agricul- 
tural and nomad and sea-faring, and dwelling in caves and 
dw^elling in palaces, through all manner of crafts and cun- 
ning knowledge and out again, I saw the same old faces go. 

The kingly face of duty loyal to the death, looking out 
upon the world before ever articulate words were uttered by 
tongue of man ; the face of reason calm to deal with life ; 

Faces of tenderness and love, the quivering lips, the 
mother's breast among the animals; 

The sturdy resolute face I saw, and the transparent eyes 
of candor like a stainless lake — when there was no other 
mirror to look in; 

The dear homely ungainly face (before ever there was 
a tent door to sit by), the incisive and penetrating face, 
the laughing erring loving satyr-face of the child of nature 
among the woods; and open and unfenced as Nature herself 
the face of divine equality; 

These I saw going up and down the paths which lead 
hither and thither from darkness to darkness. 

I saw them in the street to-day, and when I looked 
beyond the farthest glimmer of history I saw the same. 

And I saw, too, the menacing evil faces, creeping in- 
sincere worm-faces, faces with noses ever on the trail, 
hunting blankly and always for gain ; 

Faces of stolid conceit, of puckered propriety, of slob- 
bering vanity, of damned assurance; 

The swift sweep of self-satisfaction beneath the eyelids, 
set lips of obstinacy, wrinkled mouth of suspicion, swollen 
temples of anger — and the shamed shovel-face of self- 
indulgence ; 

These too I saw going up and down the paths which 
lead hither and thither from darkness to darkness: 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 227 

I saw them In the street to-day, and when I looked 
beyond the farthest glimmer of history I saw the same. 

O faces, whither whither are you going? 

What are these paths Innumerable leading from darkness 
to darkness? 

Why under so many flags of disguise, under turban and 
fez and pigtail and sombrero, plaits of cow-dung and tufts 
of feathers, Greek arrow and Persian tiara, and cocked 
and chimney-pot hat, and head-dresses of gold pieces and 
straw and grass, do you (still the same) pass Into light and 
out again — like ships across the pathway of the moon? 



XVI 



Through the narrow gas-lighted lanes of Florence the 
faces pass, and out of sight again. 

The old Campanile towers overhead Into the yet linger- 
ing after-glow of sunset, the stars twinkle faintly already 
round Its head — the memory of 500 years of Florentine 
life encircles It. 

The tower of Galileo stands away off on the hills; but 
he from It watches the stars no more — his restless brain 
grinds no more at the problems of rest and motion; 

The pilgrims of the Haj land in thousands at Jeddah, 
the route to Mecca is thronged with comers from all parts 
of the old world ; 

The children of the Roman Carnival pelt each other 
with confetti; the stream of worshipers Into St. Peter's 
wait each in turn to kiss the toe of the statue which fell 
down from heaven; the sacred and bejeweled bambino is 



228 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

taken out of its altar-cradle and carried in procession through 
the streets; 

By the mouth of the Kolima in the long arctic night 
while the moon circles round the sky the Russian exile 
stands and hungers without hope for the dear faces of 
wife and children; the features of the wild Siberyaks are 
hateful to his sight; 

The Chinese woman — her baby slung on her back — 
rows and rows the ferry boat across the river: it is her home 
and she leaves it neither night nor day; 

The furtive little Londoner with the bottle in her pocket 
slips back home from the public house — to drink while her 
husband is working; the carefully brushed and buttoned 
young man walks down Piccadilly; 

The bulky red bus-driver shouts cheerily to his mates 
as they pass; he cries "Cuckoo" in the warm April morning 
and looks innocently up into the empty sky; 

Carriages with high-stepping horses crowd Regent Street; 
the policeman stops them and pilots — carries almost — a poor 
old woman across, very fragile, light as a little child; 

The lame pinched old finder with grizzled hair and 
prowling eyes wanders the pavements all day, picking up 
oddments; he sees neither the houses nor the sky, neither 
men nor women; his eyes roll from side to side like one 
reading a book; 

The lone mother sits in her dreary little shop, eyeing 
between the prints in the window the stupid gaping faces of 
the passers-by as they pause; in the chamber upstairs her 
boy lies ill; at long intervals a customer comes in and 
throws down a penny — which she puts duly in a teacup; 

The country road-mender surveys his length of road with 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 229 

practised eye; he places marks on gate-posts and trees at 
intervals to indicate where the road-metal is to be shot; 

The slip-shod old blacksmith prattles away as he rakes 
the cokes over his work and blows the bellows with his left 
hand ; every now and then he stops to light his pipe with 
a few hot ashes; 

On the hearth-side in the fitful glare sits the good- 
natured great farm-lad by the hour, enjoying his talk, 
obscene or otherwise. 

XVII 

At dusk the lamps are lighted in the great cathedral 
church — lines of gas fringe within the huge dusky dome 
mixing with the fading daylight. The hour of service ap- 
proaches, the sound of footsteps becomes more frequent; 
around, the roar of the great city fades. 

The commercial traveler comes in with his parcel and 
strap, deposits it on a chair and seats himself beside it; 
the city man comes with his bag; the country visitor gazes 
curiously aloft and around; the tired old piffler and news- 
room loiterer slips in for half-an-hour's sleep; the young 
English girl, graceful as a kitten, and her brother sit rev- 
erently down ; the prostitute also arrives and chooses her 
place with discretion. 

The shaven-faced verger lights the candles of the great 
lectern, and the organ booms slowly forth its first notes — 
trembling through the spaces of roof and dome. 

The music-teacher leaves her roll of music on the chair, 
and kneels downright upon a mat; and the lady with her 
little boy joins in the service; 



230 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The ragged wanderlng-mlnded old man shuffles In and 
sits down, muttering to himself; the young man from the 
waterworks talks in a low voice to the girl with whom he 
is keeping company; 

The middle-aged man sleeps, with his little girl huddled 
wide-eyed against his side; the young mason with clear 
eyes and stubbly unshaven chin looks round at the vast 
columns and carven capitals; 

And the sleepy old canon stumbles on through the service, 
while the choir-boys wink at the tenors and basses. 

In the morning, in the thick January morning, rows of 
dirty tawny brick houses stretch all around through the fogs 
of London — here and there a light yet lingers in a window. 

On the pavements are hurrying mortals with tall hats, 
bags, overcoats — depressed ; 

White-faced girls going to work, city men anxiously 
glancing at the papers as they go; 

The postman with bag over his shoulders and bunch 
of letters in his hand, untidy servants sweeping the doorsteps, 
the butcher's boy in his cart, the governess going to her 
lessons ; 

The milk-carts, brewers' drays, hansom-cabs, the hurried 
self-absorbed crowd at the underground station, the skim 
downstairs, dash for the carriage doors, and train disap- 
pearing forthwith Into the tunnel. 



XVIII 

O great city of millions scrambling backwards and for* 
wards! — O toiling careworn millions of the earth! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 231 

Pursuing ever shadows shadows, laboring for that which 
seems to give so little return: 

With tears tears, and short-lived laughter, and the black 
toad sitting ever In the heart. 

O wanderers returning ever on your tracks — Innumer- 
able paths from darkness to darkness! O specks across the 
pathway of the moon ! 

You by the mouth of the Kollma regarding with pale 
face the great star-spangled sky — the glory all crossed and 
blotched with pain; 

You hurrying on In the foggy yellow dawn to the dress- 
maker's gas-reeking den — or in the filthy back slum dream- 
ing of your childhood and the banks of primroses; 

You lying anxious at night, weary and broken with busi- 
ness cares ever closing upon you — you prowling by day the 
crowded footways: 

Come, sit down now at your ease and forget all. Sleep, 
weary children, and dream of peace and quiet. 

Far have you yet to go, but there Is no need to hurry; 

What seems the end of your journey now, may-be it 
is only the beginning; what terrifies you so in prospect 
perhaps after all you will pass and hardly be aware. 

You with black bag hastening to catch the train, hasten 
no more: the deed which you want — which shall declare 
you free — you will find not at your office; 

Train disappearing into the tunnel, delude the passengers 
no more with the promise of reaching their destinations; 

Cease prowling the streets, old man! I have seen what 
you are searching for: it Is safe, and the reward is great 
— but now rest for a moment. 

And you, tight-gloved and booted and with penciled eyes, 



232 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

be not so choice about your gloves and boots and where 
you will be seated — for while you are busy with all these 
things your lover waits solitary for you. 

Lone mother in the dreary little shop, tired child on 
the way to paradise — now to thy boy lying dead upstairs 

Does the path seem long? — rest here and let us beguile 
a few moments: 

Rest here in mortal form thou that I see enveloped: 

Child of sin and sorrow and suffering rest close here. 



* 



XIX 

THE hills stand out in line against the yellow sunset, 
with snow in the hollows of their sides: in front 
stretch green undulating meadows, with trees and the sound 
of water, and smoke from cottage chimneys. 

O cry aloud over the earth for the children of men, 
of immortal destinies! 

The young farmer in gaiters and thick boots walks miles 
over the hills to see his sister at the lunatic asylum. In 
the visitor's room calm in neat attire she meets him; they 
are near the same age. Thankful, with tears, suffused, read- 
ing each other's eyes they sit together hand in hand. 

Strange cobwebs cross and cross and cloud her face and 
mind, yet within her star-like burns her changeless love 
for him. 

Praying, talking continually of the visions before them, 
pacing silent and mechanical up and down the ward, with 
disheveled hair, with narrow oblique eyes of suspicion, with 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 233 

animal postures and cries and chatterings and heavy stunned 
looks, the poor broken images and wasters of Humanity 
wait their time. 

Now at evening from the meadows and the cottages and 
the familiar water-sides exhale tender regrets and memories 
— compunctions of partings long past, and faces seen and 
voices heard no more. 

With the odors of evening they arise — from the breast 
of mortal men and women exhaled. 

By the door thou standest wondering tenderly of him or 
her who is gone; presently the doorway shall be empty of 
thy form, and another shall stand there wondering of thee. 

As thou after thy mother, so she wondered to know 
of hers, and her mother again of her who gave her birth; 

By chains of tender memory and love encircling the 
earth are the children bound to each other — there is not 
one that escapes. 

Whither is the resort of them that pass, and where do 
the uncounted generations abide? 

In what hollow do they dwell and what valley do they 
inhabit? — where do they sleep their invisible sleep, and 
does the light of the sun awaken them? 

Of what they meditated on earth do they dream, and 
on us do they look with eyes innumerable as the stars? 



XX 



O cry aloud over the Earth! 

Great ragged clouds wild over the sky careering, pass 
changing shifting through my poems! 



234 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Blow O breezes, mingle O winds with these words — 
whose purpose is the same as yours! 

Ye dark ploughed fields and grassy hills, and gorses where 
the yoldring warbles — write ye your myriad parallel gossa- 
mers among my lines! 

Lie out O leaves to the sun and moon, to bleach in 
their quiet gaze — whirl them O winds — float them away 
O sea, to drift in bays with the sea-smell and with odors 
of tar among the nets of fishermen! 

Open O pages in all lands! Let them be free to all 
to pass in and out, let them lie like the streets of a great 
city! 

Let them listen and say what the feet of the passengers 
say, and what the soughings of the fir trees say. Let them 
be equal — no more, or less — writing the words which are 
written as long as the universe endures. 



XXI 



O cry aloud over the Earth for the children of men, of 
immortal destinies! 

The great orator stands upon the platform. 

Careless of approval and careless of opposition he speaks 
from himself alone. 

He is determined and will not abate one tittle of his 
determination. 

The arguments, the pros and cons, he treats lightly — 
after a time he dismisses them; 

Traditions of science and literature he discusses for 
a while, and then — somehow — quietly puts them aside; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 235 

Flowers and figures of rhetoric he uses, but presently 
they fail and fall away. 

From the great rock-bases of his own humanity, of his 
own imperious instinct and determination, he appeals with 
uplifted arm to God and eternal Justice — 

And from a thousand eyes flash the lightnings of tears 
and joy, from that vast sea of faces breaks a roar of terrible 
and deep-throated accord. 

The arguments, the pros and cons, fly high in the air like 
leaves in a gale; 

The tradition of centuries loses its form and outline — 
like melting ice in water. 

From her deep-implanted seat in the human breast, 
from behind all reasoning and science and arguments. 

Humanity speaks her Will, and writes a page of History. 



xxn 

As a meteor glides silent for a moment among the fixed 
stars and is gone — so among the words of this book glides 
eluding that other Word which reveals their significance; 

Wonderful, eternal — when these words perish and fall 
apart from each other that word shall not perish but return 
thither whence it sprang. 

To see the old sight — and to dream the old dream — 
the theatre is crowded. 

The stout matron comes from behind the bar, the clerk 
slips down from his half-furnished fireless garret, the lady 
and gentleman lounge in from their five-course dinner: 

The joiner's apprentice slips ofE his apron and hurries 



236 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

over his tea and bread and butter; the dressmaker's girl and 
the private soldier and the blase from the club are all there — 

Amid the blaze of light and color, between the music 
and the jokes, the strange haunting clinging dream is there. 

The young buck with coat-sleeves turned up with fur 
cannot but wait for it outside the stage door; 

The improver goes back next morning to her work, but 
she cannot rightly see the box-plaits (as she runs them 
previous to putting them in the machine) ; when she hurries 
home through the streets at evening she keeps looking to 
see if what she caught sight of is there. 

On the pavement in the flare of gas the motley crowd goes 
by; the policeman stands backed against the gin-shop at the 
corner, marshaling the buses or quietly gossiping with 
cronies. 

Off the curb, by her tray of cork and felt socks, weary- 
eyed, wrapping her thin shawl close, the elderly woman 
stands, or tramps to and fro to keep her feet warm. 

Under the great roof in the dockyard slip, amid incessant 
din, deep in the bowels of the iron ship, the riveters hammer 
day by day their red-hot iron rivets. 

Brown-backed partridges fly across the ploughed land; 
far above them motionless the quick-eyed hawk discerns 
their moving shadows. 

White-tunicked Albanian soldiers march across the hills 
above the beautiful city and lake of Janina. 

Down beside a rippling stream over-shadowed by trees, 
at midnight the rapt watcher stands motionless. The stars 
in slow procession glide westward. They pass behind the 
dark tree-boles and emerge again; but he moves not — his 
thoughts move not. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRAC 237 

Absorbed, the world circles round him, the shackles of 
existence fall ofiF, he passes into supreme joy and mastery. 

Lo! the rippling stream and the stars and the naked tree- 
branches deliver themselves up to him. They come close; 
they are his body, and his spirit is rapt among them : without 
thought he hears what they and all things would say. 



XXIII 

Ah! the good news so long sought — the ancient inde- 
structible Gospel! 

The little boat sways on the great calm deep, the clouds 
hang in haze on the edges — faint and far is the land. 

Faint and far are the mountains, and the forests where 
the sun sleeps at midnoon. 

Ah! the good news desired of men — the dreams of so 
many ages! 

Who has seen that land? who has floated on that ocean? 

For the earth is round and many ships sail its seas and 
innumerable feet traverse its lands, and great are its thun- 
derclouds piled in the air: 

But who yet has truly walked its lands and who has 
floated on its seas and who has been the worthy companion 
of those its clouds piled so magnificent in the air? 

The ships lie in the harbor, behind them stretches the 
far sea-horizon and the round ocean curving into other 
latitudes ; 

The breeze floats gently off shore bearing the clouds on 
its bosom, and feeling among the folds of the flags; 

The chrysanthemums stand crowded in the cottage gar- 



238 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

den, and the promontories rear their heads mute over the 
sea — not one moment before their due time do they speak. 

Being transformed, being transformed into Thy likeness 
— passing the boundaries ; 

Passing the boundaries of evil, being delivered, being 
filled with joy; 

Drinking out of the great lake that can never be emptied 
— having come to its shores — of the great Inland ocean of 
joy that laves all mortal things; 

Sitting down there under the trees, watching the birds 
that fly a little way out over it, watching the wild creatures 
that come down to drink also of it ; 

Sitting on the quay among the bales and spars, and 
taking stock of the ships that are waiting to sail, and the 
travelers that leave and arrive, seeing the breeze also floating 
gently the folds of the flags; 

Content, overjoyed, knowing that I have yet far to go; 
but that all is open and free, and that Thou wilt provide — 

Gladly O gladly I surrender myself to Thee. 



XXIV 

Lo! the stress, the immortal passion, the dashing against 
the barriers of self, the ever-widening of the bounds; 

The endless contest, the melancholy haughty Titanic and 
lonely struggle of the soul; 

The ecstatic deliverance, the bursting of the sac, the 
outrush and Innumerable progeny! 

Lo! the healing power descending from within, calrning 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 239 

the confused mind, spreading peace among the quivering 
nerves ; 

Lo! the eternal Savior, the sought after of all the w^orld, 
dwelling hidden (yet to be disclosed) within each; 

The haunting clinging dream, the theme and long refrain 
of ages, O joy insuperable! 

Casting out types through all creation, tentative, loose 
notes and motifs. 

Sleeping in the bosom of the hills before ever the naked 
foot of man trod among them. 

Dwelling in mighty fir and oak, giants of the forest, and 
in the tiny life which springs about their roots. 

Time out of mind Immeasurable, standing behind the 
night and stars — inhabiting the wheeling earth — 

Lo, all as at random, thrown forth! 

[The old Red Indian walks the silent-wooded wilder- 
nesses — hundreds and scores of hundreds of miles are 
familiar to him ; 

Like an ancient rock full of lines, weatherworn impas- 
sive is his face — the stars are his well-known friends. 

The young Zulu with feathers on his head and wild- 
cat tails around his loins, and carriage erect and proud as 
an emu, joins the gathering of warriors — he seems to push 
the earth from beneath him as he walks.] 



XXV 

I behold the broad expanse of life over the earth — 
I see the stalwart aborigines straying naked through the 
primal woods, light-footed amid the grass; I hear their 



240 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

powerful cries and calls to each other, resounding from 
cliffs and gullies; 

I see the civilised man in his study among his books, 
or driving w^ith his lady along the boulevards; I see the 
well-dressed crowds of Paris and New York; I see the 
famished and raging mobs of incendiaries; 

The long vain fight of man against Nature I see, not 
traveling hand in hand with but setting himself in opposi- 
tion to her: the necessary prologue and apprenticeship — as 
of a wayward boy against his mother — yet vanquished, 
finally and surely vanquished ; 

All well; and I see there is no need to hurry. 

I behold well-pleased the broad expanse of life over the 
earth; I see the great factories, with smoke in the early 
morning — the hands coming in to work; the lines of shops 
along the principal streets of cities — the piers and wharves 
with those who toil on them ; 

I see the great broad pleasure of life among the millions, 
the energy, the scheming, planning, and the solid execu- 
tion of plans; 

The ties of marriage, friendship, heroic actions, dreams, 
adventures ; 

I see also the sufferings, the hardships, the hatred, the 
sin and misery, the clenched teeth, the evil of everything 
that is established and exists, and the need that it should 
be overthrown ; 

I take part in these too — they are well. I see the in- 
cessant change in society, the gaunt desperate problems which 
attend it in every stage. 

And the great problem which for each man stands behind 
these problems — the open secret which unlooses them, dis- 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 241 

solves them at a touch, as a drop of water dissolves a 
flake of snow. 



XXVI 

I behold well-pieased the broad expanse of life over the 
earth — nor is there anything in it which is not good. 

All results in the great constitution of things are pro- 
vided for, nor is it possible in all the fantastic freaks of 
Nature and of Man for anything to surpass its proper 
boundary or to fail of its due fruition. 

Water does not lie level by a more inevitable law; into 
this great ocean (of the soul) all things at length return. 

Free, free is the going and coming of so many feet; the 
kid-gloved fur-mantled lady sitting bible in hand among 
the poor is free to come and go; 

So is the young thief — with his heavy burden of con- 
cealment, his weary eluding eyes yet not eluding, his face 
unlighted with laughter — free to come and go; (I do not 
scorn, I do not blame you — you are the same to me as the 
others are, and what you can take of me that you are free 
to;) 

The selfish, the brave, the vain, the foolish may come 
and go, but whether they come or whether they go the 
results are secured to them of all they do. 

For a long time walking the earth, threading an immense 
and seemingly endless labyrinth, returning on our own 
tracks as in dreams and sleep-walking, with eyes open but 
seeing not, following some mirage, something ever receding 
and eluding — always about to clutch it. 

Occupied in business, with affairs — thinking this impor- 
tant and that important, vexed to compass this or that end 



242 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

— caught by the leg in the trap which we ourselves have 
laid ; 

Caught by ambition, envy, greed ; owners of wealth and 
lying awake at night with anxiety over it, driving herds of 
cattle and swallowing the dust thereof, planning houses and 
building us our own prisons — 

We go. 

There is no bar. The paths are all open, the sign-posts 
few — each must find the clue for himself, the exit from the 
labyrinth. 

For a long time walking the earth as In a dream there 
is no clue, only bewilderment. 

Then presently also as in a dream It all clears up ; the 
insoluble and varied problems which constitute ordinary 
life disappear entirely leaving no traces — and Life in every 
direction is navigable as space to the rays of the sun. 

XXVII 

O come with me, my soul — follow the Inevitable call; 
follow the call of the great sky overarching you. 

Disentangling the cobwebs of all custom and supposed 
necessity — the ancient cocoon In which humanity has lain 
so long concealed — 

Pass forth, Thou, into the serene light: along the hills, 
by the clumps of overhanging trees, through the doorways 
of all mortal life, pass thou redeemed, enfranchised. 

XXVIII 

So after many wanderings, after long ages resuming the 
broken thread. 
After wandering over the earth for many years — with 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 243 

the Red Indian from mountain to mountain, from river to 
river ; 

With the Tartar and Malaysian, the Teuton and the 
Celt; with the emigrant and the exile and the settler w^an- 
dering; with the Norsemen in their ships to the shores of 
Iceland and America; 

Embracing new climates, customs, times — being con- 
strained by none, hindered by none; 

After many times lying down to sleep and rising again — 
after many times entering into the mother's womb; 

The Sleeper says to him that awakens him: — 

"Ah! beautiful one — ah! prince of love, so many times 
with thy fingers touching in vain my closed lids! 

Now at last thy love pouring in upon me has found an 
entrance, and filling my body breaks the bounds of it and 
bursts forth back again into the regions whence thou 
comest. 

Ah! prince of love, lord of heaven, most beautiful one, 
of thee I am enamored and overcome with love; 

Here amid the grass once more a child sitting — watching 
the trembling stamens sway against the distant landscape ; 

Beholding all life and finding it good — being satisfied ; 

Pouring out the wine of my life to Thee — being trans- 
formed into thy likeness ; 

I depart — never again thus and thus to return. 

Henceforth when summer burns on the high ground 
where the breezes play — where Thou passest as a flame, 
transforming the trees yet not consuming them, I will fol- 
low thee. 

When night hangs crowded with stars I will ascend with 
Thee the unknown gulfs and abysses. 



244 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Spread, O earth, with blue lines of distant hills — stretch 
for the feet of men and all creatures! 

Sing, chant your hymns, O trees and winds and grass 
and immeasurable blue! 

Being transformed being transformed into Thy likeness — 
lord of heaven and earth! 

Being filled with love, having completed our pilgrimage, 

We also pass into peace and joy eternal." 



Part III 
AFTER CIVILISATION 

We are a menace to you, O civilisation! 

We have seen you — we allow you — we bear with you 
for a time. 

But beware! for in a moment and, when the hour comes, 
inevitably. 

We shall arise and sweep you away! 



246 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



After Civilisation 

IN the first soft winds of spring, while snow yet lay on 
the ground — 
Forth from the city into the great woods wandering, 
Into the great silent white woods where they waited in 
their beauty and majesty 

For man their companion to come: 

There, in vision, out of the wreck of rities and civilisa- 
tions, 

I saw a new life arise. 

Slowly out of the ruins of the past — like a young fern- 
frond uncurling out of its own brown litter — 

Out of the litter of a decaying society, out of the con- 
fused mass of broken down creeds, customs, ideals. 

Out of distrust and unbelief and dishonesty, and Fear, 
meanest of all (the stronger in the panic trampling the 
weaker underfoot) ; 

Out of miserable rows of brick tenements with their 
cheapjack interiors, their glances of suspicion, and doors 
locked against each other; 

Out of the polite residences of congested idleness; out of 
the aimless life of wealth ; 

Out of the dirty workshops of evil work, evilly done; 

Out of the wares which are no wares poured out upon 
the markets, and in thcv^shop-windows. 

The fraudulent food, clothing, drink, literature; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 247 

Out of the cant of Commerce — buying cheap and selling 
dear — the crocodile sympathy of nation with nation, 

The smug merchant posing as a benefactor of his kind, 
the parasite parsons and scientists; 

The cant of Sex, the impure hush clouding the deepest 
Instincts of boy and girl, woman and man ; 

The despair and unbelief possessing all society — rich and 
poor, educated and ignorant, the money-lender, the wage- 
slave, the artist and the washerwoman alike; 

All feeling the terrible pressure and tension of the mod- 
ern problem: 

Out of the litter and muck of a decaying world,- 

Lo! even so! 

I saw a new life arise. 

The winter woods stretched all around so still ! 

Every bough laden with snow — the faint purple waters 
rushing on in the hollows, with steam on the soft still air! 

Far aloft the arrowy larch reached into the sky, the high 
air trembled with the music of the loosened brooks. 

sound of waters, jubilant, pouring pouring — O hidden 
song in the hollows! 

Secret of the earth, swelling sobbing to divulge itself! 

Slowly, building lifting itself up atom by atom. 
Gathering itself together round a new centre — or rather 
round the world-old centre once more revealed — 

1 saw a new life, a new society, arise. 

Man I saw arising once more to dwell with Nature; 
[The old old story — the prodigal son returning, so loved, 
The long estrangement, the long entanglement in vain 
things] — 



248 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The child returning to its home, companion of the win- 
ter woods once more, 

Companion of the stars and waters, hearing their words 
at first hand (more than all science ever taught), 

The near contact, the dear dear mother so close, the 
twilight sky and the young tree-tops against it ; 

The huts on the mountain-side, companionable of the 
sun and the winds, the lake unsullied below; 

The daily bath in natural running waters, or in the par- 
allel foam-lines of the sea, the pressure of the naked foot 
to the earth; 

The few needs, the exhilarated radiant life — the food and 
population question giving no more trouble; 

[No hurry more, no striving one to override the other: 

Each one doing the work before him to do, and taking 
his chance of the reward. 

Doubting no more of his reward than the hand doubts, 
or the foot, to which the blood flows according to the use to 
which it is put;] 

The plentiful common halls stored with the products of 
Art and History and Science to supplement the simple 
household accommodations ; 

The sweet and necessary labor of the day; 

All these I saw — for man the companion of Nature. 

Civilisation behind him now — the wonderful stretch of 
the past; 

Continents, empires, religions, wars, migrations — all gath- 
ered up in him; 

The immense knowledge, the vast winged powers — to use 
or not to use — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 249 

He comparatively indifferent, passing on to other spheres 
of interest. 

The calm which falls after long strife, the dignity of 
rest after toil; 

Hercules, his twelve labors done, sitting as a god on the 
great slope of Olympus, 

Looking out over the Earth, on which he was once a 
mortal. 

The Word Democracy 

UNDERNEATH all now comes this Word, turning the 
edges of the other words where they meet It. 

Politics, art, science, commerce, religion, customs and 
methods of daily life, the very outer shows and semblances 
of ordinary objects — 

The rose in the garden, the axe hanging behind the door 
in the outhouse — 

Their meanings must all now be absorbed and recast In 
this word, or else fall off like dry husks before its dis- 
closure. 

Do you not see that your individual life is and can only 
be secured at the cost of the continual sacrifice of other 
lives, 

And that therefore you can only hold it on condition 
that you are ready in your turn to sacrifice it for others? 

The law of Indifference which must henceforth be plainly 
recognised and acted upon. 

Art can now no longer be separated from life; 

The old canons fail; her tutelage completed she becomes 



250 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

equivalent to Nature, and hangs her curtains continuous 
with the clouds and waterfalls; 

Science empties itself out of the books; all that the books 
have said only falls like the faintest gauze before the reality 
— hardly concealing a single blade of grass, or damaging the 
light of the tiniest star; 

The form of man emerges in all objects, baffling the old 
classifications and definitions; 

[Beautiful the form of man emerges, the celestial ideal — 

The feet pressing the ground, the supple strong ankles 
and wrists, the cleave of the loins, the shoulders, and poised 
head aureoled by the sun ;] 

The politician turns round upon himself — like the scientist 
he acknowledges his brain baffled by the problems; he 
reaches his hand for help to the hand of the People ; 

The commercial man turns round — the firm ground gives 
way beneath his feet also ; to give now seems better than to 
get — and what sort of a trade-motto is that? 

All the customs of society change, for all are significant; 
and the long-accepted axioms of every day life are dislocated 
like a hill-side in a landslip ; 

The old structures can no longer stand — their very foun- 
dations are shifted — 

And men run forth in terror from the old before they 
can yet find firm ground for the new. 

In all directions gulfs and yawning abysses, 
The ground of society cracking, the fire showing through, 
The old ties giving way beneath the strain, and the great 
pent heart heaving as though it would break — 
At the sound of the new word spoken — 
At the sound of the word Democracy. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 251 

No volcano bursting up through peaceful pastures is a 
greater revolution than this; 

No vast mountain chain throw^n out from ocean depths 
to form the primitive streak of a nev^ continent looks further 
down the future : 

For this is* lava springing out of the very heart of Man: 

This is the upheaval of heaven-kissing summits whose 
streams shall feed the farthest generations, 

This is the draft and outline of a new creature, 

The forming of the wings of Man beneath the outer 
husk — 

The outspread pinions of Equality, whereon arising he 
shall at last lift himself over the Earth and launch forth to 
sail through Heaven. 



The Meaning of It All 

AGES and ages back, 
Out of the long grass with infinite pain raising itself 
into the upright position, 

A creature — fore-runner of Man — with swift eyes glanced 
around. 

So to-day once more, 

With pain pain and suffering — driven by what strange 
instinct — who can tell? 

Out of the great jungle of Custom and supposed Neces- 
sity, into a new and wonderful life, to new and wonderful 
knowledge, 

Surpassing words, surpassing all past experience — the 
Man, the meaning of it all, 

Uprears himself again. 



252 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

These Populations 

THESE populations — 
So puny, white-faced, machine made, 

Turned out of factories, out of offices, out of drawing- 
rooms, by thousands all alike — 

Huddled, stitched up, in clothes, fearing a chill, a drop 
of rain, looking timidly at the sea and sky as at strange 
monsters, or running back so quick to their suburban runs 
and burrows, 

Dapper, libidinous, cute, with washed-out small eyes — 

What are these? 

Are they men and women? 

Each denying himself, hiding himself? 

Are they men and women? 

So timorous, like hares — a breath of propriety or custom, 
a draught of wind, the mere threat of pain or of danger? 

O for a breath of the sea and the great mountains! 

A bronzed hardy live man walking his way through it 
all; 

Thousands of men companioning the waves and the 
storms, splendid in health, naked-breasted, catching the lion 
with their hands; 

A thousand women swift-footed and free — owners of 
themselves, forgetful of themselves, in all their actions — 
full of joy and laughter and action ; 

Garbed not so differently from the men, joining with 
them in their ^ames and sports, sharing also their labors; 

Free to hold their own, to grant or withhold their love, 
the same as the men; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 253 

Strong, well-equipped in muscle and skill, clear of jfinesse 
and affectation — 

(The men, too, clear of much brutality and conceit) — 
Comrades together, equal in intelligence and adventure, 
Trusting without concealment, loving withowt shame but 
with discrimination and continence towards a perfect pas- 
sion. 

O for a breath of the sea! 

The necessity and directness of the great elements them- 
selves ! 

Swimming the rivers, braving the sun, the cold, taming 
the animals and the earth, conquering the air with wings, 
and each other with love — 

The true the human society! 

Andromeda 

NOW over the Mediterranean shore, fronting the sun. 
In the great woods where only the peasant comes 
And brings his bottle of wine, and figs, and goat-milk 
cheese — 

The Gods yet dwell, but are not seen of men. 

Steeply the ground slopes from the chestnut woods above, 

Through tangles of pine and arbutus, myrtle and rose- 
mary, 

Down to the sea. 

The tasseled evergreen oak grants densest shade — the 
acacia showers its fragrance on the air; 

In open spots the rock-rose blooms, 

And the green lizard's little heart beats fast in the sun. 



254 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Here all day long mindful of times gone by 
The sun yet lingers; from the slumbering sea 
(On whose clear sands the yellow and horned poppy 
loves to stray) 

Sometimes fair Aphrodite lifts an arm 

Unseen of mortals. 

The Dryads in the aspen branches wave 

Their trembling fingers, and young Hyacinth 

Droops earthward once more wounded by his lover. 

But none resume their ancient human form. 

He, the great Liberator, with the wand of love so won- 
derful 

(Who dwelt on earth, and dwells not, but must dwell 
again), 

He comes not — ^whom they wait. 

The rocks, the trees, the flowers, the loving animals. 

The sea, the heavenly winds. 

The human form that chained within them all 

Pleads for deliverance — 

He comes not whom they wait. 

Only the train shrieks by with monkey faces staring out 
of the windows; 

Hotel and villa desecrate the land; 

Wealth trails its slime ; the Greek has fled ; and Civilisa- 
tion like a dismal dragon guards its prey. 



o 



The Triumph of Civilisation 

N the outskirts of a great city, 

A street of fashionable mansions well withdrawn 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 255 

from all the noise and bustle; 

And in the street — the only figure there — in the middle 

of the road, in the bitter wind, 

Red-nosed, thin-shawled, with ankles bare and old boots, 
A woman bent and haggard, croaking a dismal song. 

And the great windows stare upon her wretchedness, and 
stare across the road upon each other. 
With big fool eyes; 

But not a door is opened, not a face is seen. 
Nor form of life down all the dreary street, 
To certify the existence of humanity — 
Other than hers. 



The Dead Christ 
(After the picture by Fra Bartolomeo) 

ONCE more the dead Christ lies — borne down the 
ages. 
O precious head, still fragrant with the box of ointment 
broken, 

O feet for kisses, 

Thin shrunken knees, and hands yet worn with toil, 

Dear Mother bending over, breathing clouds 

Of love and pity! 

Ah! the cruel fate! 

Sweet lips she suckled, hands that pressed so small 

Against her breasts — pierced now with shameful wounds! 

The dead-pale face so gentle, the dear god 

She brought forth on the Earth! 



256 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

O People crucified in every land, 
Mothers in all the earth weeping your sons! 
Sisters and lovers kissing the feet of love, 
Poor w^ay-worn feet, gross toil-disfigured hands, 
So loved, so loved! 

Once more the dead Christ lies — borne dovi^n the ages. 



Christmas Eve 

HARK! the bells ringing! 
In the deep night, in the depth of the winter of 
Man, 

Lo! once more the son is born. 

O agelong, not in Nazareth alone. 

Nor now to-day — but through all ages of the past, 

The bells of Christmas ringing: 

The Savior-music like a dream from heaven 

Touching the slumbering heart. 

Sweet promise which the people with unerring instinct 
cling to! 

O winter sun arising never more to set! 

O Nature slowly changing, slow transforming to the 
hearts of men. 

Shrine of the soul, shrine of the new-born god — of Man 
himself. 



Little heart within thy cage so many years — year after 
year — 

Beating, still beating, so tenderly yearning 
For Comrade love, the love which is to come: 
Often near stopping, or wounded like a bird, so full of 
pain — thy thread of life almost snapt — 

Yet with joy so wonderful over all and through all con- 
tinuing: 

Soon altogether shalt thou stop, little heart, and the beat- 
ing and the pain here shall cease; 

But out of thee that life breathed into the lips of others 
shall never stop nor cease. 

Through a thousand beautiful forms — so beautiful! — 
through the gates of a thousand hearts — emancipated freed 
we will pass on: 

I and my joy will surely pass on. 



258 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



When I am Near to You 

NOW when I am near to you, dear friend, 
Passing out of myself, being delivered — 
Through those eyes and lips and hands, so loved, so 
ardently loved, 
I am become free; 
In the sound of your voice I dwell 
As in a world defended from evil. 

What I am accounted by the world to be — all that I 
leave behind: 

It Is nothing to me any longer. 

Like one who leaves a house with all Its mouldy old fur- 
niture and pitches his camp under heaven's blue, 

So I take up my abode In your presence — 

I find my deliverance in you. 



Cradled in Flame 

CRADLED in flame, 
Or like a tiny charm-figure within an agate reclin- 
ing, from that which encloses it Inseparate, indivisible — 
So, deep in my heart, through all that chances, 
Thy form, thy form, Indelible remains. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 259 



All Night Long 

ALL night long in love, in the darkness, passing through 
your lips, my love — 
Breathing the same breath, being folded in the same 
sleep, losing sense of Me and Thee, 

Into empyreal regions, beloved of the gods, united, we 
ascend together. 

Then in the morning on the high hill-side in the sun, 
looking dow^n upon the spires of the larches and Scotch firs. 
Mortal, we tread again the earthy floor. 

O Earth, the floor of heaven — 

O Sun, shining aloft in the sky so pure — 

O children of the sun, ye flowers and streams, and little 
mortals walking the earth for a time — 

And we too gazing for a time, for a time, for a time, 
into each other's eyes. 

Of the Past 

OF the Past — of those that come no more — 
Of the feet that tread the door-sill no more, of the 
eyes we no more can look into— — 

The sound of the voice so longed for, but it is not heard, 
The one human form sought for over all the world, in 
all the throngs of cities, by sea-coasts and bays, over far con- 
tinents and islands. 

Among all the habitations of the stars, but it is not 
there — 



26o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Of the self swooning down, dying utterly, 

Of love, love, without end and without beginning. 

Visiting all mortals, the sum of human life. 

With wings like a vast bird passing in the night — veiled 

awful form so close, yet impossible to detain: 

Why dear face so white in the night — so white in the 

moon's faint light as it steals along the hill-top — 

Dear face gazing up into mine, dost thou remind me? 

Love's Vision 

AT night in each other's arms. 
Content, overjoyed, resting deep deep down in the 
darkness, 

Lo! the heavens opened and He appeared — 
Whom no mortal eye may see. 
Whom no eye clouded with Care, 

Whom none who seeks after this or that, whom none 
who has not escaped from self, 
May find. 

There— in the region of Equality, in the world of Free- 
dom no longer limited, 

Standing as a lofty peak in heaven above the clouds. 

From below hidden, yet to all who pass into that region 
most clearly visible — 

He the Eternal appeared. 



I 



Nearer Than Ever Now 

F I should be taken up into Thee, O blue blue sky — to 
pass the bounds of myself, to share thy life, O Nature: 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 261 

Pouring pouring upon all the words which now are dis- 
tilled only painfully from me — pressed out, expressed — 

To mingle my breath with Thy breath, my body and its 
liquids with the earth and the sea — losing my mortal out- 
line in Thine: 

Ah! unto those that I love swiftly running I would be- 
come their life. 

Nearer would I touch them then, than ever now that I 
am prisoned In this form. 



o 



O Thou Whose Form 

THOU whose form is ever in my heart, 

O flesh that holds me pent with terrible force, 
Dear limbs and lips that seize upon my life 
And in your fire consume it — O sweet love: 
Lo all I see — 

The clear and sunny hills, the woods, the streams, 
The orchards, fields, the lines of poplars tall, 
The belfried towns, the river at my feet, 
The great blue sky, yea He who stands behind it — 
Are mine for thee, to lose themselves in thee. 

The Elder Soldier in the Brotherhood to the 

Younger 

DEAR comrade, at whose feet thus now I kneel. 
Of you perhaps so soon to be seen no more — 
Here I give you my charge, that afterwards remembering 
and desiring me, 

You may find me again in these others. 



262 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Slowly out of their faces I will emerge to you — ^lo! I 
swear it, 

By the falling rain and dimpled thunderclouds in the 
East I swear it — 

[To become your life whom I have loved so long] 

With love absorbing, joy and blessedness enclosing, 

I will emerge to you. 

That you now to other comrades, and these again to 
others, 

Over the whole world may bear the glad covenant, per- 
fected, finished — 

To form an indissoluble union and compact, a brother- 
hood unalterable, 

Far-pervading, fresh and invisible as the wind, united 
in Freedom — 

A golden circle of stamens, hidden beneath the petals of 
humanity, 

And guarding the sacred ark. 

Through heroisms and deaths and sacrifices. 

Always for the poor and despised, always for the outcast 
and oppressed, 

Through kinship with Nature, and the free handling of 
all forms and customs, 

Through the treasured teaching of inspired ones — never 
lost and never wholly given to the world, but always emerg- 
ing — 

Through love, faithful love and comradeship, at last 
emancipating the soul into that other realm (of freedom 
and joy) into which it is permitted to no mortal to enter — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 263 

Thus to realise the indissoluble compact, to reveal the 
form of humanity. 

To you, dear comrade, I transmit this charge — bequeathed 
also to me — 

In love remaining faithful to you, as now, never to 
change. 

Through all times and vicissitudes faithful faithful to 
you. 

Here now at your feet, leaning on your knees, in your 
eyes deep-looking. 

All that I have said I confirm. 



Into the Regions of the Sun 

SO at last passing (the great sea stilled, the raging ocean) 
— passing away. 

All sorrow left behind, the great intolerable burdens 
which men vainly try to carry. 

All all abandoned, left there lying — 

Suddenly lightened, like a bird that shakes itself free 
from the limed twigs, 

Soaring, soaring, into joy supernal passing, 

Lo! the dead we leave behind and pass to the realms of 
the living. 

And not we alone. 

By our love poured out, by the manifold threads and 
strands of attachment to others — which cannot now be sev- 
ered; 



264 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

By not one inwardly refused or disowned whom we have 
ever met; 

By the dear arms of lovers circling each other all night 
long, by their kisses and mingled breath, 

And love by night and day — thinking of each other when 
absent, rejoicing so to be near; 

By tramps over the hills, and days spent together in the 
woods and by watersides; 

By our life-long faithful love — (ah! what more beauti- 
ful, what in all this world more precious!) 

By the life-long faithful comradeship now springing on 
all sides, the Theban band henceforth to overcome the 
world — its heroisms and deaths — 

And him who gave the calamus-token first; 

By all these — 

Not alone, no longer alone — 

But drawing an innumerable multitude with us, 
Into the regions of the sun, into the supernal aether, 
With love perfected, bodies changed, and joy — ah ! joy 

en earth unutterable — 

Lo! the dead we leave behind, and pass to the realms of 

the living. 

As It Happened 

CROSS-LEGGED in a low tailor's den, gasping for 
breath — 
The gas flaring, doors and windows tight shut, the thick 
sick'^^tmosphere ; 

The men in their shirt-sleeves, with close heat from the 
stove, and smell of sweat and of the cloth; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 265 

Stitching, stitching, 12 hours a day, no set time for 
meals — 

Stitching, cross-stitching, button-hoh'ng, binding, 
Silk twist, cotton twist, black thread, white thread, 
Stouting, felling, pressing, damping. 
Basting, seaming, opening seams, rantering, 
With sore eyes, sick sick at heart, and furious, 
In the low tailor's den he sits. 

All day in his mind — like a hunted criminal — he re- 
volves : How shall I escape ? 

How change this miserable pittance for Freedom, and 
yet not starve? 

At night after some brief dream of joy he wakes to tears, 
tears, tears — 

Drenching his bed with tears. 

No God, no Truth, no Justice — and under it all, no 
Love. 

[This is what is slowly killing him — no Love.] 

A little fire burns in his heart, burns night and day; 

The slow pain kills — no Love. 

O the deep deep hunger! 

The mean life all around, the wolfish eyes, the mere 
struggle for existence, as of men starving on a raft at sea — 
no room for anything more. 

All that he has read in books, all the stories of other 
times and lands — Mignon, Eloise, Eros the beautiful boy 
wandering over the world — so wonderful a world, and he in 
this prison, this filthy den! 

O the deep deep hunger of Love! 



266 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

All the obscene talk of the shop is neither here nor there: 
it cannot fill the void: 

The shallow laughter of his companions and the bought 
kisses of the street-girls are the mere husks that the swine 
did eat. 

O little heart, beating, beating! 

Heart once so strong, full-pulsed ; now often at night out 
of some dream of Splendor — 

[Dream of Love — some shining form within a garden 
and at the gate stands a bearded man, dagger in hand, saying 
"Thou canst not enter here, except thou pass the Ordeal." 

And he in his dream, beholding Love beyond, bares his 
breast gladly to the knife, and feels the sharp point turn 
within his heart] — 

Waking thus oft to pain and sick sick powerless days 

At last little heart thy strength gives way indeed. 

Stumbling, with strange uncertain motion, like one con- 
fused — now hurrying on, 

Now halting in thy pace as near to stop, 

That something's wrong with thee is past a doubt. 

And the grave doctor comes and says the valves are 
weak, and recommends rest and good food and .fresh air and 
other things that are not to be had : but says nothing of 
that which lies nearest to the patient. 

And he, the patient, half misdoubts himself — thinks 
likely the doctor knows best — feels only strangely dull and 
indifferent ; and after a while rises and goes back to his den 
and takes his place once more cross-legged amongst the rest, 
stitching, stitching; and the horns on his heel and ankle 
grow again, and the air seems closer and more suffocating 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 267 

than ever; but he drags through the days, ever more le- 
thargic growing, caring not much whether he die or live — 
thinking perhaps to die on the whole were better. 

When, as it happened — and this was the strangest of all — 
quite suddenly, the most unexpected thing in the world, 

To a casual little club, which once a week he was in 
the habit of attending, there came one night a new member, 

Of athletic strength and beauty, yet gentle in his man- 
ners, 

And with a face like a star — so stedfast clear and true 
that he the sufferer felt renewed by merely looking on it. 

But what was even more strange, the newcomer turning 
spoke friendly to him, and soon seemed to understand, 

And from that time forward came and companioned and 
nursed him, and stayed whole nights and days with him 
and loved him. 

And out of his despair there grew something so glorious 
that he forgets it not, night nor day; 

Great waves of health and strength come to him — as to a 
man who after the long Arctic night bathes in the warmth 
and light of the re-arisen Sun; 

Even the wretched tailor's den is transformed; but soon 
leaving that he accepts by preference the poorest work in 
the open under heaven. 

And breathes again, and tastes the sweet air afresh; 

And watches a new sun rise in the mornings and a new 
transparency among the stars at night; 

And the body grows strong and hardy, and the little heart 
gathers and knits itself together. 

And sings, sings, sings; 

Sings all day to its friend whether present or absent. 



268 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



Parted Lips 

PARTED lips, between which love dwells — 
Only a little space of breath and shadow, 
Yet here the gate of all the world to me. 



Summer Heat 

SUN burning down on back and loins, penetrating the 
skin, bathing their flanks In sweat, 
Where they lie naked on the warm ground, and the ferns 
arch over them. 

Out in the woods, and the sweet scent of fir-needles 
Blends with the fragrant nearness of their bodies; 

In-armed together, murmuring, talking, 
Drunk with wine of Eros' lips, 

Hourlong, while the great wind rushes In the branches, 
And the blue above lies deep beyond the fern-fronds and 
fir-tips ; 

Till, with the midday sun, fierce scorching, smiting, 
Up from their woodland lair they leap, and smite. 
And strike with wands, and wrestle, and bruise each 
other. 

In savage play and amorous despite. 



o 



A RiVEDERCI 

NCE more in dreams, wandering along the rotid by 
the sea, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 269 

I tarry a moment leaning my elbows on the wall beside 
you — 

I look out over the blue waves with your eyes, and feel 
the sun on me as you that feel it ; 

My mother it is that sits in the balcony among her pots 
of oleander in the little narrow street, my boat that lies 
half-heeled upon the sand ; 

These are my mountains that I love. 

This is your face and mine clear-cut upon the air. 

Your life-warm lips I kiss and mine you kiss again, 

And laughing part with bright a rivederci. 



w 



Who Will Learn Freedom? 
HO will learn Freedom? 



Lo! as the air blows wafting the clinging aromatic scent 
of the balsam poplar, dear to me. 

Or the sun-warm fragrance of wallflowers, tarrying here 
for a moment, then floating far down the road and away; 

Or as the early light edging the hills, so calm, unpreju- 
diced, open to all ; 

So shall you find what you seek in men and \Yomen — your 
passage and swift deliverance. 

As when one opens a door after long confinement in the 
house — so out of your own plans and purposes escaping, 

Out of the many mirror-lined chambers of self (grand 
though they be, but O how dreary!) in which you have 
hitherto spent your life — 



270 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

In these behold once more the incommunicable freedom 
of the sky, the green hills, the woods and the waters, 

To pass in and out for ever, having abandoned your own 
objects, looking calmly upon them, as though they did not 
exist. 

« » « 

Now who so despised and lost, but what shall be my 
Savior? 

Is there one yet sick and suffering in the whole world? 
or deformed, condemned, degraded? 

Thither hastening I am at rest — for this one can absolve 
me. 

I am greedy of love — all all are beautiful to me! 
You my deliverers every one — from death, from sin, from 

evil — 

1 float, I dissolve in you! 

O bars of self you cannot shut me now. 

frailest child, O blackest criminal, 

Whoe'er you are I never can repay you — though the 
world despise you, you are glorious to me; 
For you have saved me from myself, 
You delivered me when I was in prison— 

1 passed through you into heaven. 
You were my Christ to me. 

After All Suffering 

AFTER all suffering, after all weariness and denial — 
The heart almost stopped, food ceasing to nourish, 
grief making the tongue dry, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 271 

All pleasure I'n life ceasing, unable to rouse interest in 
any object or pursuit, 

But love — and that gone far away! 
After all, 

Nearer to thy heart, O humanity, 
By this of suffering we come. 

I know that thou canst not deny me: 

I know that each pain is a door by which I approach one 
degree nearer to thee. 

What sorrow is there but I have shared it? 

What grief but it has removed an obstruction between 
me and some one else? 

Look in my face and see. You cannot bar me now. 

I pass all doors, and am where I would be. 



When a Thousand Years Have Passed 

THINK not that the love thou enterest into to-day is 
for a few months or years: 
The little seed set now must lie quiet before it will ger- 
minate, and many alternations of sunshine and shower de- 
scend upon it before it become even a small plant. 

When a thousand years have passed, come thou again. 
And behold ! a mighty tree that no storms can shake. 

Love does not end with this life or any number of lives; 
the form that thou seekest lies hidden under wrapping after 
wrapping ; 

Nevertheless it shall at length appear — more wondrous far 
than aught thou hast imagined. 



272 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Therefore leave time: do not like a child pull thy flower 
up by the roots to see if it is growing ; 

Even though thou be old and near the grave there is 
plenty of time. 



A Message Committed to the Waves 

I SEE the waters flowing as of old — dancing, rippling, 
O so light and beautiful ; 
The river-banks, and pollard willows leaning, and bul- 
rushes where as boys we used to linger. 

All transmuted, turned into words and tongues, licking 
me round like flames — unearthly, scorching; 

All transmuted — the soft water-depths, the weeds below, 
the dimples of sunlight dancing, 

The shrill piping of the lark, the kine knee-deep in grass, 
and the piled thunderclouds floating in the summer haze — 

Like flames, unearthly, scorching. 

For here on this water and round these banks we came 
floating — troops of friends — yet not on this water; by these 
banks, yet not by them. 

And* the dimples glanced, and the birds sang — as now, 
yet O how different! 

Mystery, mystery! 

O wonderful orb of creation! 

O frame, beauteous ever-living twining frame of human 
love, chalice of precious drops poured out, mystic scroll on 
which our lives in blood are written. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 273 

Groat great awful indivisible Nature — birthplace and 
grave of Humanity! 

Tremble tremble, O waves — bear my love too on your 
breasts to generations yet unborn ; 

(Lo! to you I commit it!) 

Hear me ye perennial tongues and flames, ye fields and 
skies speak speak what I command you! 

Ye hieroglyphics stand untampered to remotest time! 

grasses growing so lush about my feet and the feet of 
those who pass, while ever you grow on earth forget not 
the bleeding drops wherewith you have been watered! 

Waft, O breezes, our love and the love of all true lovers, 
and fail not while you blow to bring glad messages to those 
who faint; 

For we are borne upon you — 

1 am borne upon you. From this body, broken and use- 
less, from this mortal here and there, I fade, I fail utterly; 
I cannot remain, it is no use; 

Pouring pouring out, losing my name and place, flowing 
abroad, surrendering myself to all — I depart, to join the in- 
visible. 

Ah heaven ! Ah sounds of harmony ineffable ! 

Ah tears, and deeps of sorrow dread and soundless! 

Ah love! ah precious love including all! 

So still to all — 

To those lingering in prison, 

To the aged and forsaken, stranded like wrecks on the 
bleak shore of life, 

To the heartbroken and weary, to those stunned with 
despair; 

To the wife awaking to the treachery of her husband; 



274 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

To the exile leaving his dear ones, and probably for 
ever ; to the crippled and incapable and diseased ; 

To the pinned workers In back streets oscillating drearily 
between the home and the workshop ; 

To those of the hopeless sad mechanical days over all the 
earth — the outcast, the shunned, the persecuted ; 

The closing days, the narrowing grooves, the heart touched 
no more by the sweet Illusions, no more to hope respond- 
ing, no more to the call of religion; 

Ah to all in the mighty brotherhood of sufferers — 

Dearest, most precious ones, 

Corner-stones of human life, hidden bearers of burdens, 
under-girders of the great ship with Its Incalculable freight! 

Dearest and most precious of all — ah, sufferers, sufferers, 

To you we give our love — 

Arise ! for great is your triumph ! 



Rest At Last 

AH ! love — having journeyed through all of life, having 
become freed even from thee — there remains nothing 
glorious but thee. 

Exhaled out of all frailty, out of this little tenement of 
flesh, so ephemeral, 

Out of these hands and feet which are and are not — out 
of these eyes through which I look, on which I look — 

Thou hast taken possession of earth and heaven: the 
sun Is thy right hand and the moon thy left: 

In Thee all forms, of all I seek, are mine, 

And I in them attain at last to rest. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 275 

The Wind of May 

O GLORIOUS wind, that in my lover^s face blowest, 
Even as now in mine — though the deep sea part 
us — 

Fragrant wind, with heart so tenderly laden. 

Tell him, my lover, against whose face thou goest. 

In his ears and nostrils and eyes and thick hair rippling — 

Whose passion-fountain he too, nightlong, daylong, 

Drinks at, inbreathing thee — sweet wind, O tell him 

My love like thine for ever endures, and fails not. 

Great cloud-wet wind, through the thick woods heavily 
trailing, 

Mid millions of flowers their sex-life's sweetness exhaling, 
Hyacinth-bell and May-bloom in countless beauty: 
Feed him, body and soul, with secrets fairest. 
Disclose thy heart, O wind, and the love thou bearest. 



O Earth J scene of what toil and anguish! 
Century after century, thousands thousands of years. 
What reek of battles, smoke of vast wilderness-cities , 
Going up from age to age, losing itself in the calm, im- 
measurable blue. 

O wonderful unutterable secret! the moon gliding through 
the trees! 

The soul of man slowly transforming itself, growing 
bursting through the sheaths — the stars looking on! 

The new creature born anew, in travail and in suffering, 
ascending into heaven; 

Ah! songs and harmonies angelic sounding — ah! joy the 
mortal frame can scarce sustain! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 277 



A Voice Over the Earth 

THE sound of a voice floating round the Earth, saying: 
Lo! I float over the world and over all cities and 
lands — wherever men and women are at home I am at home. 



The snowy peaks, in ranges, that guard the cradles of the 
human race — rising over their rocky cliffs, out of their val- 
leys full of trees — the wind fluctuating the forests, the clouds 
swift-flying over the topmost jags; 

The great plains, and lower lands, dotted with farms and 
villages and cities, for scores, hundreds, thousands, of miles; 

The winding rivers and the islands, and the broad seas; 

All these I see, and those that Inhabit them, 

Over the world I float, I range all human experience. 



II 



The broad Italian landscape spreads below me — the lands 
of the upper Po and Bormlda; 

I see the wave-like congregated hills terraced with vines 
to their very tops, the pink or yellow painted homesteads 
dotted here and there, the arched stone barns, and villages 
clustered on the hill tops with belfries high against the sky. 

The old woman, my mother, with walnut brown skin 
haunts the lonely farmhouse all day while the others are in 
the field ; 

She wanders from chamber to chamber, hardly knowing 



278 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

what she is doing. Her memory carries her back to the far 
past — she lives not in the present. 

Sometimes into the great attic overhead she climbs, vi^ith 
its huge roof-beams and brick floor, and spreads the grapes 
to dry or leisurely picks them over. 

The haymakers work barefoot in the clover patch, turning 
the clover and loading the low-wheeled waggon in the frag- 
rant transparent evening; 

The peasant plows with his one-stilted plow, or creaks 
along the road with his cart and yoke of cream-colored oxen ; 

The girls and women with red or yellow kerchiefs stand 
among the branches of the mulberry trees by the roadside, 
picking leaves for the silkworms; 

The country folk congregate on the steps of the village 
church, looking out over the hills — the women passing in by 
ones and twos ; 

The men play mora over their wine in the little hostelry; 
the boys play at ball down the narrow by-streets, using the 
roofs and buttresses to baffle their opponents' strokes; 

The old play of daily life goes on — the centuries-long 
play; 

The ruins of the Roman aqueduct still cross the bed of 
the river, the ruins of Roman words and customs still lie 
embedded in the life of to-day; 

The old blood still runs in the veins, the water runs in 
the rivers, the crops grow in the fields — the light of youth, 
of love, of old age, of death, shines in the eyes. 

From the accident of here and now. 

From this hill whence for a moment I overlook the fair 
garden of human life, from this few feet of human flesh 
which I inhabit, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 279 

From these fierce desires which hem me in, these defects, 
these limitations, these mortal sufferings, 

This little creature-dom, this brief emprisonment of life, 

I descend, I pass, I flow down, 

[O words so vain to tell — O strange incredible transfor- 
mation!] 

I pass, I flow down, into the freedom of all times, into 
the latitude of all places. 

I work on the hills once more. with the slave and the 
freedman among the vines, I mix the mortar for them that 
build the aqueduct; 

The lover and his girl lean against my breast in the moon- 
light long ages back as now; 

The face of the mother understands my face a thousand 
and ten thousand years ago, as it does to-day ; 

I am the cream-colored ox with mild eyes, and I am the 
driver who curses and goads it; 

I am the lover and the loved — I have lost and found my 
identity. 



Ill 



The Piedmontese peasant takes me again into his little 
cottage of sun-dried bricks among the vineyards, and gives 
me a glass of cool wine in the shade ; 

I see again the scantily furnished interior, the floor of 
native rock, the rickety ladder which serves for staircase to 
the chamber above, the table and chairs and one or two 
cooking utensils; 

And the great frame of sticks and canes, big as a four- 



28o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

poster bedstead, where he breeds his thousands of silk- 
worms. 

But here too, alas! there is grief; for the poor son, so 
passionately loved of his mother, is wasting away apparently 
in a decline; 

All day with shawl thrown over him he squats in the sun 
by the door, or walks feebly to and fro, unable to help his 
father in the field — at night he lies awake and hears the 
wearisome rustle of the silkworms eating their food ; 

The mother prays the good God, but knows not whether 
anything comes of it — the little figure of Mary in the niche 
of the wall looks just the same though hearts are breaking. 

IV 

Ah ! fragrance of human love exhaled ! 

Great clouds from frail and perishable forms escaping 
silently, 

Into the night, into the vast aerial night of Time! 

The little flash of youth, the reaching of hands to hands, 
of hearts to hearts, of lips to lips, 

The closing in of the outer shell, the chrysalis-death, 
and the terrible struggles for liberation ; 

The larvae crawling the earth for a time — on hill-sides 
and in valleys, in huts and palaces — chained to their little 
plots of earth, their few frail feet of flesh; 

The great thunderclouds passing over from snowy range 
to range, touching the little creatures with their shadows ; 

The great sun out of the unfathomable touching them too 
with his finger — breeding slowly but surely within them the 
life which must destroy their mortality. 



TOWARDS DEMOCIL\CY 281 



Onwards, onwards, I float. 

The smoke and glare, the confused roar and tumult of a 
manufacturing town spread all around ; sounds of voices 
ascend past me into the silent supernal blue. 

In the tobacco factory amid rows of girls, with my little 
bit of mirror or comb concealed in a nook of my bench — I 
sit — or photograph placed where I can see it as I work; 

Or in the printing office of the daily paper — printing re- 
ports of law-courts and cricket-matches — I scramble with 
five or six others to the boxes for a fat take. 

The long trial is over, and I am the prisoner on whom 
sentence has been pronounced. 

The judge in scarlet and ermine, preceded by liveried 
heralds blowing trumpets, strides down the corridors and 
through the crowd thronging the steps of the Town Hall, 
into his blue and silver paneled coach ; 

Hustled and thumped and buffeted by the police, I am 
fetched from the dock by underground passages to the prison 
van, and bumped through the streets to the gaol — there to 
await my execution. 

Pale and desperate in the cutlery buffing shop boys and 
girls bend over their wheels; 

In squalor and monotony the winter daylight through 
dirty windows dawns and dies away again upon them ; 

In squalor and monotony the light of youth and of hope 
dawns and dies away again from their eyes; 



282 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The master looks round with his hands in his pockets, 
well satisfied; 

The cheap goods ready to fall to pieces as soon as used 
are duly packed and despatched to African and Pacific Island 
traders. 

Civilisation plays its part in the history of each nation 
and each individual, 

Unerringly the time of its unfoldment to each arrives, 
and again the time of its dismissal and departure. 

Brawny figures move to and fro in the iron works, half- 
seen through clouds of flying steam or against the glare of 
furnaces ; 

The flame of the Bessemer cupola roars, with showers of 
sparks, and rattling of cranes, and shouts of men ; 

The foreman stands calmly aside, spectroscope in hand, 
or gives a signal with uplifted arm ; 

I see the reversing of the cupola, and the outpour of 
molten steel, lilac with yellowing vapor around it; 

The rose-colored shafts of sunlight through the high roof, 
the terraces and platforms, the glints and halos amid the 
vapor ; 

The balcony where the men stand with their hydraulic 
handles controlling the huge lifts and cranes beneath them; 

The groups steadying with iron poles and hooks the great 
lifted ingots of steel, or regulating the outflow of liquid stuff 
into the moulds; 

The man in a corner washing his shoulders and head in 
a bucket of water; 

The steam-hammers, the blocks of yellow-hot iron shim- 
mering in the heated air; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 283 

The steel-melter's men around the crucibles with their 
tongs — their feet and legs swathed In rags to keep off the 
heat, their sweat-handkerchiefs held between their teeth ; 

The daring, recklessness even at times, the delight In the 
power and endurance — the drink, gross talk, rough jokes — 
throwing the great pressures upon the novices or sham- 
ming to pick quarrels with them; 

The planing and cutting of armor-plates, the huge re- 
sistless steam-driven machinery, the gouges and drills, 

The shaping of the plates (each one numbered) to the 
lines of the ships they are intended for — the careful draw- 
ing and planning, and following out of the plans ; 

The transporting of them to the sea-coast, the riveting 
of them each in its place ; 

And the floating away of these thousands of tons over 
the ocean and round the bend of the world. 

And he at the forge streaming with sweat, the striker, 
with bared breast, turning out claw-hammer heads by the 
score, 

Keeps dreaming and dreaming all day between the strokes, 
of love which is to come and change our earth Into heaven ; 

But his brother who works with him laughs at his dreams 
— and the spring comes in the woods to all alike: 

The gnarled oak breaks into pale yellow buds against the 
blue, the mouse stirs under the dry grass, and the corn-crake 
runs with head er€Ct among the young green blades of corn. 

VI 

Each morning anew the mist rests on the hills; the sun 
jises on fresh clouds to be dispersed; 



284 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

It splinters Its shafts against the great rock face, and 
brings out in bold relief the figure of the quarryman in his 
loose blue-checked shirt; 

Where on a projecting angle he stands, with mighty 
hammer-stroke driving the brods and wedges; 

Now he splits off a great mass and displaces it with the 
crowbar, 

While overhead among the tree-roots, in a sunny niche of 
the barings, 

A sparrow chirps cheerfully to him. 

Meanwhile the scythe-smith goes to see what he can do 
for his brother in prison ; 

He takes the train and finds out the public-house to which 
the turnkey goes, and gives him half-a-sovereign to get his 
brother something to eat. 

The turnkey is a mild old man and would not willingly 
harm anybody; 

He says nothing to the prisoner, but when he leaves his 
cell each day he quietly drops a good-sized tommy behind 
him. 

And this is the Hogarthlan interior of the Lincolnshire 
dancing chamber: the gas, the smoke, the fiddle-scrape, the 
slopped drink; 

The great projecting bay-window with seats in it, the 
twilight fading on the groups in the market-place without ; 

The Dutch-looking ramshackle rooms lighting into one 
another — farmers' men and girls tumbling and sitting on 
each other's knees; 

Fat women gyrating together; the young man pressing his 
comrade to him in the dance; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 285 

The middle-aged farmer slipping off into a bam at the 
back with a great wench: she cries, "How good, how good 
it is, O come again !" 



In the Chamber of Birth 

IN the chamber of birth, 
Calm and joyful the exhausted mother, with dishev- 
eled hair, lies obliquely across the bed — the little primitive 
conical-skulled god rests snug on the pillow in front of her; 
The baffling infant face, with closed eyes and flexible 
upper lip, and storms and sunshine sweeping across its tiny 
orb, and filmy clouds of expression! 

But for her O the rest, the rest and the peace now it is 
all over — no desire to move, only to lie and rest for joy! 

While the bustling cheerful midwife is full of praises and 
congratulations, and the good anxious husband comes to the 
door smiling again at last. 



A Cottage Among the Hills 

OUTSIDE, the winter moonlight shines so peacefully 
upon the little cottage far away among the hills — 
Where within the old human drama repeats itself. 
The aged grandmother sits in the ruddy glow by the 
chimney-corner — her little grandson leans against her knee; 
The other children (for some have come in from a 
neighboring cottage, and Christmas is now approaching) 
sing hymn after hymn in tireless trebles, and the old grand- 



286 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

dad tones the bass in now and then with still melodious 
voice ; 

While silent, with tired and suffering face (thinking of 
the week's work, and of her runaway drunken husband) the 
mother strips her youngest naked in the firelight. 

Ah! the tender dreams, the griefs, the passions, and the 
shattered hopes! 

The long culminating experience! 

The slow change of the words the children sing — to 
meanings unimagined! 

The flickering light on joists and rafters of the low 
ceiling ; 

The old man bent with toil (road-mending now these 
fifty years) ; 

The rosy children with wide open mouths; the dear god 
whom they sing of — ever-coming, ever-expected; 

The rose-bud black-eyed boy against his granny's knee; 

And she — her white white hair, high brows, and pale 
transparent face — so sacred, calm. 

Most like the moonlight shining there without. 



Alice 

WITH little red frock in the fire-light, in the lingering 
April evening — 
(The moonlight over the tree-tops just beginning to shine 
in at the cottage door) — 

Her big brown eyes and comical big mouth for very glad- 
ness unresting, like a small brown fairy — 
She stands, the five-year-old child. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 287 

Then, so gentle, with tiny tripping speech, and with 
a httle wave of the hand — 

"Good-night," she says to the fire and to the moon, 

And kissing the elder wearier faces. 

Runs off to bed and to sleep in the lap of heaven. 



Baby Song 

CROONIE croonie. Baby baby, up and down, 
Sing song, all day long — 
Father's gone away for many a day, but he'll come back 
again, 

Over the waters, before long. 

Croonie croonie, Baby baby, up and down, 
Sun shine, winds blow — far behind baby the waters flow; 
Winds and sun round him run, peep in his eyes and off 
they go — 
All in fun. 

Croonie croonie. Baby baby, O what tears! 

Little heart break, little breast shake — fie such tears! 

Mother's arms so tired with dancing. 

All day long; 

Baby baby — always baby — fretting crying all day long. 

Baby baby, come to Mammy, 
Stifle sobs upon her breast — 
Little blunt gums on the nipple. 
That's the feel we both love best; 
Sleep will soon come after titty. 
Sobs will cease and baby rest. 



288 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Croonle croonle, Baby baby, sleeping sound : 
By the door we stand a moment — moonlight dappled on 
the ground: 

Winds are sleeping, waters calm. 
Keep our little babe from harm. 
The great Earth shall be his cradle, 
Rocking rocking day by day ; 
Star-bespangled curtains spread 
Every night above his head ; 
Suns on suns shall gild his brow: 
Baby baby, What art Thou? 



Early Morning 

THE thrush sings meditative high in the bare oak-boughs 
— while the still April morning just drops with faint 
rain, and the honeysuckle climbs snakelike with green wings 
among the underwood; 

The voice of the ploughman sounds across the valley, and 
the cackle of the farmyard mingles with the rumble of a 
distant train on its way to the great city: 

Where, In her boudoir, by the light of the dying fire — the 
shutters yet closed and the candles guttered and gone out — 
she lies, the Paris beauty, naked on her low tiger-skin couch ; 

And he, her lover, naked too, on the floor beside her has 
slipped — his head bent forward, and asleep — with her hand 
in his dark short hair. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 289 



The Golden Wedding 

NOW fifty years through wind and sun and rain, 
Through the sweet heyday of youth, through life's 
maturity and age, 

We've bloomed and withered, dearest, side by side, 
Two trees upon one root. 

Rememberest thou 

How hand in hand schoolwards we ran, we two. 

With tiny feet? Yes, we two, is it not strange? 

Or later how the merry pealing bells rang us to Church 
(no music I thought like them) ; 

Then we reared five children, fell on troublous times, 
and toiled and suffered till we tired of life. 

And they went one by one, and launched upon the world 
and sailed away. 

Proud, with all canvas set, while we are left. 

Old battered wrecks — here in this cottage of the hills — 
and wondering 

Which the great waves of time will first wash down. 

And now dearest one, through all this lapse of years I 
look into your eyes, 

And see them deep as ever; 

Their beauty is to me a passion just as ever. 

Voiceless, unfathomable, that no time can touch. 

If the great gulf should come and swallow me in sheer 
oblivion — still it is good to have known thee; 

But that thou should'st die, 

That thou should'st perish from thyself and cease to be, 



290 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

I cannot credit. Somewhere nearer God, 
When this thick mortal slumber has gone by, 
We shall perchance awaken. 



The Mother to Her Daughter 

BEAUTIFUL child that launchest out on the great sea 
of life, 

Soon I, thy Mother, must leave thee: soon the dark shall 
close me in, and leave thee alone in the bright sunshine. 

And thy lovers shall come and make love to thee: they 
shall lay their fortunes at thy feet, and their strength and 
the glory of their manhood ; 

They shall desire thee, for thou art beautiful as the silver 
sickle moon arising in heaven before the dawn. 

Yet when they come forget not me, O my child: be not 
deceived by their words; 

For none ever again shall love thee as I love thee, none 
ever again shall know, as I know, thy hidden thoughts — 
none shall read the light that plays upon thy face as I can 
read it. 

These shall love thee for themselves: they shall seek thee 
in order to possess thee; but I have given all that I have to 
thee. 

All the years that we have been together since thou first 
pressed thy tiny palm upon my breast to look into my face, 
until now ; 

I have given myself to thee. 

Before thy feet, or ever thou couldst walk, my love has 
walked, my thoughts have circled thee, my desire has made 
thee very beautiful. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 291 

If I might pray, I pray that when thou hast known the 
love of man 

Thou, too, may'st become a mother, and so even through 
travail and suffering may'st know the greater love. 

Then far away down the years thou shalt remember me ; 

As when one ascends a mountain the opposite mountain 
lifts itself higher and higher, so as thou goest farther from 
me I will grow upon thee clearer and closer even than now. 



A Sprig of Aristocracy 

BROWNED by the sun, with face elate and joyous, 
Pitching hay all day in the wide and fragrant hay- 
fields, 

Frank and free, careless of wealth (preferring to do 
something useful, and to champion the poor and aged) — 
O splendid boy, with many more like thee, 
England might from her unclean wallowing rise again 
and live. 

A Scene in London 

BOTH of them deaf, and close on eighty years old: 
She stone blind, and he nearly so; 
Side by side crouching over the fire in a little London 
hovel — six shillings a week — 

Their joints knotted with rheumatism, their faces all day 
long mute like statues of all passing expression (no cloud 
flying by, no gleam of sunshine there) — lips closed and 
silent : 



292 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

But for that now and then taking his pipe out of his 
mouth, 

He puts his face close to her ear and yells just a word 
into it, 

And she nods her blind head and gives a raucous screech 
in answer. 



S. James' Park 

AN island ringed with surf — 
A cool green shade and tiny enchanted spot of trees 
and flowers and fountains — 
The ocean raging round It. 

The roar of London Interminably stretching, intermin- 
ably sounding, 

Great waves of human life breaking, millions of drops 
together, torrents of vehicles pouring, business men marching, 
gangs of workmen, soldiers, loafers, street hawkers; 

Shopkeepers running out of their shops to look at their 
own windows, a woman seized with birth-pangs on a door- 
step, ragamuffins and children swirling by, eddies and rapids 
of fashion ; 

The everlasting tide, ebbing a little at night, rising again 
In the day — with fierce continuous roaring — 

Yet infringing not on the little Island. 

Here only a little spray, a dull and distant reverberation ; 
In the soft shade a pleasant drowsy air, the willows hang- 
ing their branches to the water; 

The drake preening his feathers in the sun, or swimming 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 293 

among the flags by the pond side, regardless of Nelson peer- 
ing over the tree-tops from his column, taking no note of 
the great clock-face of Westminster. 

Only a little spray, broken water. 

Drop by drop, one by one, or here and there in twos, 

Specimens, items out of the deep. 

The baker's man, working 15 hours a day, leaves his 
handcart in a convenient spot outside and puts in a quiet 
quarter of an hour here with a novel ; 

The old woman — her thumb gathered and disabled by 
incessant work on crape — now as a matter of course thrown 
out of employ — goes along moaning and muttering to her- 
self ; 

The pursy old gentleman who has made his money out of 
the mourning warehouse also goes along; 

The footman on an errand walks leisurely by, the French 
nurse plays with the little English children ; 

The rather elegant young lady meets her man by appoint- 
ment at one of the garden seats; they study Bradshaw to- 
gether in an undertone, revolving plans; 

The middle-aged widower comes along — thin, so thin, 
dressed all in black, seeing nothing, hearing nothing — sit- 
ting down for a moment, then up again — resting only in 
constant movement ; 

The tramp, with dead expressionless face — the man who 
is not wanted, to whom every one says No — comes along, 
and throws himself listlessly down under the trees. 

Only a little spray, broken water. 

The summer sun falls peaceful on the grass, 



294 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The tide of traffic rises a little during the day and ebbs 
again at night, 

But the great roaring bates not — breaks the surf 
Of human life forever on this shore. 



The Twin Statues of Amenophis III at Thebes 

THOUSANDS of years— 
As now with the light of evening on their heads and 
featureless faces, their bases wrapt in gloom — 

All the hours before dawn or after sunset, in the clear 
circling of the moon and stars, or through the long cloud- 
less day, braving the terrific heat, 

While the caravans of camels go by below, and the peas- 
ant ploughs with his ancient plough, or reaps his clover 
and lupins — century after century; 

And the flood-waters of the Nile wash up and recede 
again, and the sun darkens in the occasional sandstorm or 
rarer shower of rain — 

Thousands of years: 

Like great rocks, human, colossal, part of the Earth 
it3clf. 

Cosmic, wondrous, far-back allegories of the human soul, 
They sit looking out over the world while the genera- 
tions pass. 

And the travelers come and gaze — and go away again, 
wondering what they meant who made such things ; 

The philosophers of Greece come, and Alexander comes, 
and the Roman Emperors come; and the Christian fathers 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 295 

and monks (fit successors of the Egyptian), and the Ma- 
homedan conquerors, and Napoleon, and the scientific men, 
come — and go away again ; 

And the wandering Arabs come and light their campfires 
— and go away again; and the Cook's tourist comes and 
goes away again ; 

And the river changes its course, and the mountains 
crumble in the heat of the sun, and the sandhills shift, and 
villages are built and are buried ; 

But of him who placed the figures there these words do 
survive : — 

"I, Amenhotep, have made the name of the king immor- 
tal, and no one has ever done as I have in my works ; 

I made these two statues of the king — wondrous huge and 
high, forty cubits, dwarfing the Temple front — 

In the great sandstone mountains I made them, one on 
each side, east and west; 

And I caused eight ships to be built, whereon they were 
floated up the river; 

And placed them here — to last as long as heaven." 



''Artemidorus, Farewell" 
{Inscribed on a mummy case in the British Museum) 

ARTEMIDORUS, farewell. 
No more no more thy dear lips shall I touch, 
Nor kiss thy hands — those clinging hands in itiine; 
Thy gentle eyes — ah ! shall we never gaze 
Again upon each other? 
Artemidorus, dearest, dearest one, 
Leave me, O leave me not. 



296 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

All the sweet hours that by the Nile we sat 

In palm-tree shade, and watched the swallows dip; 

Or when we first met at the sacred tank 

Deep in the garden grounds of Arsaphes, 

And told our secrets (heed'st thou?) to the fishes! 

The lotus filling all the air with scent, 

The pigeons wheeling, hundreds, overhead — 

By our sweet love and laughter, then and since, 

A thousand times, and all thy quips and pranks, 

Leave me O leave me not. 

Where shall I go? what do? why live? O why 

Remain when thou art gone? There's nothing left 

The nights so long, with pain pain at my heart; 

The days, the staring Sun, and every sight 

Shooting an arrow at me. 

Could I but see thee once, or hope to see — 

One hair of thy head, one finger of thy hand, 

To hear one little word more from thy lips — 

'Twere more than all the world. But now the priests 

Have got thee in their clutches ; and already 

They wrap the sacred linen o'er thy head, 

Thy features and thy hair they cover up, 

And round thy arms thy fingers and thy hands 

They wind and wind and wind and wind the bands, 

And I shall see thee nevermore, my own. 

And thea they'll paint 

Thy likeness on the outer mummy case. 

And stand it by the wall, as if to mock me, 

Throwing my arms around a lifeless shell, 

Breaking my heart against it. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 297 

And In a hundred years stray folk will come 

And ask, "Who was Artemidorus pray?" 

Nor listen for an answer — if in sooth 

There's any that can give one. And in time 

Strangers perhaps will overrun our land 

And violate thy coffin, and unbind 

With sacrilegious hands the rags, and find 

Only a little dust — ^Ah! nothing else. . , . 

And I shall be a little dust too then . . . 

And whether lord Osiris, the good God, 

Will hold our twin souls safely in his hand 

Three thousand years through internatal forms 

Of bird or beast or serpent, in reserve 

For that new day they say has yet to dawn; 

Or whether He too will chance fade to dust 

Forgetting and forgotten of all men — 

Behold I know not . . . Only this I know 

Of all the words we said in joke or earnest. 

And vows we vowed, and solemn troth we plighted, 

And all the multitudinous chatter and idle tales 

And laughter that we got through, like two strear 

That babble for mere gladness down the lands, 

Artemidorus dear, 

Dearest of all things either in earth or heav 

For the long silence but one word remains 

Remains but this — *'FarewelL" 



T 



From Turin to Paris 

IRELESS, hour after hour, over mountains plains and 
rivers. 
The express train rushes on. 



298 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The shadows change, the sun and moon rise and set; 

Day fades into night, and night Into day. 

The great cities appear and disappear over the horizon. 

On through the hot vineyards of Piedmont the express 
train rushes; 

The great-h'mbed LIgurlan peasant sprawls asleep In the 
third-class carriage which has been put on for a portion of 
the course; 

The calm grave country girls droop their lids to slumber; 

The huge unwieldy friar with elephantine limbs, small 
eyes, and snout like an ant-eater — not a particle of religion 
in his whole body — gazes blankly out of the window; 

And the young mother with black lace on her head looks 
after her little brood. 

On through the hot vineyards In the fierce afternoon the 
express train rushes — the villages on the hill-tops twinkle 
through the blaze — the fireman opens the furnace-door of 
the engine and stokes up again and again. 

The first-class passengers dispose themselves as best they 
may, with blinds down, on the hot and dusty cushions ; 

The respectable and cold-mutton-faced English gentle- 
man and his wife and daughters, the blase Chinaman with 
yellow fan, the little Persian boy so brown, lying asleep 
against the side of his Instructor, 

The deeply-lined large-faced shaven old Frenchman, the 
Italian artist, bearded, nearing forty years old, with expres- 
sive mouth and clear discerning eyes, 

Dispose themselves as best they may. 

The sides of the carriage He open, like glass. 

The young priest fresh from College recites his evensong, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 299 

then addresses himself to the conversion of his Protestant 
fellow-traveler — I see his winning manners at first, and 
then his intimidatory frowns followed by threats of hell- 
fire; 

The group of laughing girls in one compartment are 
talking three or four languages ; 

In another an Italian officer leans close in conversation to 
a yellow-haired young woman, and touches her lightly every 
now and then on the arm ; 

In a third sits a bedizened old hag, purveyor of human 
flesh — with great greedy clever eyes (once beautiful under 
their still long lashes), deep wrinkles (yet not one of wis- 
dom or of sorrow), and thin cruel lips; 

On a frequent errand from London to Italy she travels; 

I hear her pious expressions as she talks to the lady sit- 
ting opposite to her — I note her habit of turning up her eyes 
as of one shocked ; 

And still the train rushes on, and the fields fly past and 
the vineyards. 



Dusk closes down, and the train rushes on and on ; 

The mountains stand rank behind rank, and valley be- 
yond valley, 

Towering up and up over the clouds even into broad day 
again. 

Lo! the great measureless slopes with receding dwindling 
perspective of trees and habitations; 

Here at their foot the trellised gardens, and rivers roar- 
ing under the stone bridges of towns, 



300 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And there the far ledges where the tumbled roofs of 
tiny hamlets are perched — the terrace after terrace of vine 
and wheat, the meadows with grass and flowers; 

The zigzag path, the lonely chalet, the patches of culti- 
vation almost inaccessible, 

The chestnut woods, and again the pinewoods, and be- 
yond again, where no trees are, the solitary pasturages; 

[The hidden upper valleys bare of all but rocks and grass 
— they too with their churches and villages;] 

And beyond the pasturages, aye beyond the bare rocks, 
through the great girdle of the clouds — high high in air — 

The inaccessible world of ice, scarce trodden of men. 

3 

There the rich sunlight dwells, calm like an aureole of 
glory, over a thousand forms of snow and rock clear-cut 
delaying. 

But below in the dusk along the mountain-bases the train 
climbs painfully. 

Crossing the putty-colored ice-cold streams again and 
again with tardy wheel ; 

Till the great summit tunnel is reached, then tilting for- 
ward. 

With many a roar and rush and whistle and scream from 
gallery to gallery 

It flies — rolls like a terror-stricken thing down the great 
slopes into the darkness — and night falls in the valleys. 



Here too then also, and without fail, as everywhere else, 
The same old human face looking forth — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 301 

Whether in the high secluded valleys where all winter 
comes no sound from the outer world, or whether by the side 
of the great iron road where the plate-layer runs to bring a 
passenger a cup of cold water, or whether loafing in the 
market-place of the fourth-rate country town — the same. 

Here too from the door of her little wooden tenement 
the worn face looking forth — fringed with grey hair and 
cap — the old woman peering anxiously down the road for 
her old man ; 

[Saw you not how when he left her In the morning, how 
anxiously, how lovingly, with what strange transformation 
of countenance — Death close behind her — she prayed him 
early to return?] 

The little boy with big straw hat and short blouse bring- 
ing the goats home at evening, the gape-mouthed short-petti- 
coated squaw that accompanies him; 

The peasant lying in the field face downwards and asleep, 
while his wife and children finish the remainder of his meal; 
the bullock-faced workers on the roads or over the lands; 

Ever the same human face, ever the same brute men and 
women — poignant with what divine obscure attractions! 

And the dainty-handed Chinaman In the first-class car- 
riage surveys them as he passes, with mental comparisons ; 

And the string of mules waits at the railroad crossing In 
the last dusk as the train thunders by, and the navvy with 
great shady hat and grey flannel shirt, and scarf round his 
waist, waits; 

And the inhabitants of opposite hemispheres exchange 
glances with one another for a moment. 



302 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



The night wears on — and yet the same steady onward 
speed — the draw of the great cities, Paris and London, be- 
ginning already to be felt ; 

The pause for a few minutes • at a junction — the good 
coffee and milk, the warm peaceful air, the late moon just 
rising, the few poplars near, the mountains now faint in the 
distance behind ; 

The faces seen within the cars, hour after hour, with 
closed eyes, the changed equalised expression of them, the 
overshadowing humanity — 

(The great unconscious humanity in each one!) 

The old bedizened hag overshadowed, 

The young priest and his recalcitrant opponent both 
equally overshadowed — their arguments so merely nothing 
at all; the beautiful artist-face overshadowed; 

The unsafe tunnel passed in the dead of the night, the 
slow tentative movement of the train, the forms and faces 
of men within — visible by the light of their own lanterns, 
anxious with open mouths looking upward at the roof — all 
overshadowed ; 

The little traveler asleep with his head on the lap of his 
instructor — the Persian boy — traveling he too on a long 
journey, farther than London or Paris; 

The westward swing of the great planets through the 
night, the faint early dawn, the farms and fields flying past 
once more; 

The great sad plains of Central France, the few trees, 
the innumerable cultivation, the peasants going out so early 
to work, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 303 

The rising of the sun, for a new day — the great red ball 
so bold rising unblemished on all the heart-ache and suffer- 
ing, the plans, the schemes, the hopes, the desires, the de- 
spairs of millions — 

And the glitter and the roar already, and the rush of the 
life of Paris. 



To THE End of Time 

KNOW that to the end of Time and the remotest corner 
of Space there is nothing that you cannot take for 
your own — nothing without personal relation to yourself, 
body and soul: to this body, sweet, bitter, painful, pleasur- 
able, fatal — to that, equal. Not the most fatal drug but 
feeds that one, not years of slow exile or of illness. 

Through this life, that life — the two always conjoined ; 
through failure, stedf astness ; through the sight of the change 
and flow of things, immortality; through the magnificence 
and splendor of nature (I speak to you now seated on some 
wooded slope or hill — the birds, the buds, the sky after 
rain), yourself equal in magnificence and splendor. 

On the Eve of Departure 

ALWAYS on the eve of departure. 
Thy goods all packed, thy testament signed and wit- 
nessed. 

Touching with lightest touch all offerings life lays at 
thy feet : 

This is thy fate, O blest one ! 



304 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

After the day's work leaving the papers behind on the 
desk, the tools on the bench, 

Letting the garden-line remain in the garden, leaving the 
newly sharpened pick in the hardening trough. 

Leaving the scissors and the sleeve-board on the floor 
where they fell, and the waistcoat-lining unfinished on the 
machine. 

Letting go all the plans and purposes of the day, forget- 
ting about them as If they had never been : 

Lo ! this is thy fate, O blest one ! 

The chains of office round your neck, yet to uncoil and 
lay them quietly aside, 

The cares of state that have held you since morning 
holding you no longer, the axe-handle relaxing its grasp on 
you; 

Out of the old ever passing, free as air. 

For the acceptance of all, and the praise and blame of 
men, alike without prejudice: 

Lo! this is thy fate, O blest one! 



Arenzano 

IN the great Church over the little fishing-village, 
In the gloom of evening and of the spacious Interior — 
only a few candles lighted over a side altar — 

[The great doors wide open to the twilight over the bay, 
with silhouettes of figures entering, and continual tread of 
feet upon the stone floor] — 

There in the dusk the fisher-wives kneel and pray: 
Ave Maria f ave, ave. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 305 

A great throng, hardly visible, with shawls thrown over 
their heads — and men and children: 
Ave Maria, ave, ave. 

The long monotonous semi-savage refrain and wash of 
voices, 

Unending, like the rhythm of the sea itself, 

The untrained choir, the rise suspense and breaking of 
the wave of trebles, the answer of the basses in passionate 
iteration — the mesmeric influence — 

The great Christ over the main altar, half lost in gloom, 
with arms outstretched, and crucified, 

The faint sweet smell of incense, 

The long Past: 

The long Past from which it all comes — 
Strange voices and refrains. 

As from the coasts of Tyre, and the worship of Ashtoreth, 
Or this Is Isis the ever-virgin Madonna and her infant 
Horus — one with the Virgin of the stars — 
Or this the antiphonal music of the psalms 
Within the Jewish Temple. 

The same great needs of human life all down the ages — 

Each tiny drop to feel the living wave it forms a part of ; 

Dear Love ; and Death ; the narrow clear-cut bounded 
present, the dread Unknown, the children clinging to each 
other — 

Not one that dies, not one the waves engulf, 

But tears and agony to those remaining. 

Ah ! who can tell and who can see the end ? 



3o6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Man that art God yet perlshest as grass! 
I sit here in a corner of thy world-old temple — 
(Here in this old fishing-village just as much as any- 
where else) — 

In the dark unknown unnoticed I sit, 

And hear the ceaseless sounding of Thy Sea, 

And join the Ave Maria, ave, ave. 



o 



O Tender Heart 

TENDER heart of our humanity, 

O bleeding sacred heart, with tears of ages. 



Dear Mother, once on earth, now glorified — 
Thy arms outstretched in love o'er all creation — 
Thy husk lies by the sea-shore, which Thou once 
Didst thus and thus inhabit (parted now, 
For it could ne'er contain Thee). 

O buds and blooms of Spring once more returning. 
Bright waters flowing, O heavenly blue still shining, 
And Thou still spreading over all and changeless, 
O tender heart of our humanity, 
O bleeding sacred heart, with tears of ages. 

* * * 

Arise Thou glorified, 

Year after year — leaving thy mortal days behind — 
Dear mother in the great unseen impending. 
Slowly creation orbs about thy form. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 307 

I follow where thou walkedst. I behold 
Where ages back on earth Thou still didst pass, 
I see thee in the streets to-day disguised ; 
Thy spirit glides eternal — and I follow, 
Kissing the sacred foot-prints as I go. 

All suffering for thy dear sake is holy — 
(O thorn-crowned brow, O bleeding sacred heart) — 
Thou that didst bear me and thy children all 
With bitter pangs and sorrow for thy cup 
(Thy thin hands laid at last within the grave), 
All suffering for thy dear sake is holy. 

The Carter 

SO in the dirt, amid the filthy smoke and insensate din 
of the great city, 
Into my attic came my friend the carter and sat with 
me for a while. 

Young and worn, these are the words he said: 

"Never before could I have believed it, but I see it 
all now; 

There is nothing like it — no happiness — when you have 
clean dropped thinking about yourself. 

But you must not do it by halves — while ever there is 
the least grain of self left it will spoil all ; 

You must just leave it all behind — and yourself be the 
same as others; 

If they want anything, and you want it, well it is the 
same who gets it; 

You cannot be disappointed then. 



3o8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

I do not say it is not hard, but I know there is nothing 
— no happiness — like it; 

It is a new life, and them that has never tasted it, 
they have no idea what it is." 

Thus in the din and dirt of the city, as over the moun- 
tains tops and in the far forests alone with Nature, 

I saw the unimaginable form dwelling, whom no mortal 
eye may see. 

The unimaginable form of Man, tenant of the Earth from 
far ages, seen of the wise in all times — 

Dwelling also in the youthful carter. 



The Stone-Cutter 

AND men to-day — are they not always running about 
to do something? 
But He says: / have finished the work that Thou gavest 
me to do!* 

Thus to me the stone-cutter, with chisel and mallet in 
hand all the while dishing out a sump-cover. 

Standing out there in the Sun, in the light July breeze 
so cool. 

Spoke the words of Christ — the old indestructible words 
— which all down the ages, 

Whether in the mouth of stone-cutter or carpenter, 

Emerge time after time from the heart of the people. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 309 



The Voice of One Blind 

BLIND, ah! blind — ft has come upon me now — 
A veil thickening between the world and me. 
[I saw them move through it — saw the dear faces and 
figures as in a fluid haze, 

And then they blurred, and then I saw them not.] 

Alone? Ah no! who shall describe the joy that has 
come upon me? 

The blow that should have crushed me broke my chains, 
And I, that was the prisoner, am free. 

Sweet — all of fever fled — all calm now and peaceful. 

To feel the warm sun on my hands, or traveling along 
my forehead, 

To hear the sounds — the rustling of the breeze or chirrup 
of the birds, the kettle singing or the turned page of the 
book my loved one reads — 

The touches and the hands, the voices and the sweet 
caresses ; 

How they come nearer, now! 

I go no more to seek, I stay at home, and let them 
come to me. 

And sweet sweet visions — 

Ah! forms I saw not when my eyes were clear — 
Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mortal friends, 
What gods are come about me? 



3IO TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And Thou above all: 

Thou, gracious presence, sweet enfolding me 
Far far within, touching me nearest of all, 
As through so many ages men and women Thou with 
the sweetness of thy love hast ravished: 

So I touch them through Thee — through Thee to all 
I am come nearer now. 



A Song of One in Old Age 

WEARY and broken, old age, art thou now come 
upon me? 
My faculties drying up like pools of water in summer, 
My body dying, my brain rusting, my heart-beat dull 
and torpid — 

Falling off like a dead leaf from the tree, unheeded, 
useless — 

Is this old age then? lonely, ah! how lonely! 

The world hurries by so light and glad and joyous — 
each man following his call: but I without any; 

The spring returns with the budding leaves on the beech 
so fresh, and the virgin grass, and the foals and young calves 
in the fields: as it has returned so oft before; but I am old 
and must die — there is no place for me any longer; 

At night in dreams the faces return to me — the faces 
that I loved, ah! dearest faces! — but when I wake the 
world is changed, all changed: there is no place for them 
any longer, but strangers are around me. 

How should love come to me — what is there that any 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 311 

one should seek me? Who will pause for the empty husk 
of a man, and shall I be a supplicant for pity? 

How could I ever have guessed when I was young that 
this would, come upon me — and yet it has come upon me, 
as it has come upon so many millions before? 

To die — that is it. This at last is what I have so often 
counted on — to die, to be effaced, to be made of no account 
— and now it is forced upon me whether I will or no. 

Death, I shall conquer thee yet. 

Didst thou think to terrify me? — but lo! was I not 
dead before thou camest? 

Long long years ago did I not abandon this frail tene- 
ment, all but in name? — was not my last furniture packed 
up and ready to be transported? 

The virgin grass received me, and the beech trees so ten- 
derly green in spring, and the bodies of my lovers that I 
loved : 

They became my dwelling, and I forgot that I existed. 

1 passed freely and floated on the ocean of which before 
I had only been part of the shore, 

I took up my refuge beyond the limits where thou couldst 
come. 



Yet now once more confined. 

Here in this prison cell while the walls grow thicker — 
of all I was a little spark waits yet its liberation. 

Come quickly, Death, and loose this last remainder of 
me — shatter the walls. 

Break down this body of mine, and let me go. 

Or else, 



312 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

In patience let me wait seeing fulfilled 

That which I sought so long — to be effaced. 

Hidden I wait — this old husk suits me well — for who 
will guess the likeness of me through it? 

This is my invisible cap wherein I'll ramble yet through 
many byways of sweet human life. 

And thou too, stranger, shalt pity me if thou wilt, and 
I will accept thy pity gratefully — 

Yet after all perhaps the best gift of the two 

I'll give to thee. 



Old age, old age? — No! only there outside. 

Here where I am 'tis everlasting youth. 

This is where the virgin grass springs from, I see, and 
the loves that clothe the frame of humanity. 

Out of this old shell passing I begin again — there is no 
death here, there can be no death, 

Only perpetual joy. 

In Extreme Age 

UNTO Thee, O Nature, I abandon myself: 
Accept me, thou beautiful. 
Marred and deformed and stunted take me from myself 
Unto thy own great uses. 

Lo, I outgrow this body! painfully 
My life ebbs yet and flows again within it. 
These hands and feet, these eyes and brain, these senses, 
faculties, have served their turn — 

The dinted tools I render back to Thee. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 313 

As when a boy I sat upon the beach in the sun, and 
watched the sparkling waves, 

So now in extreme age sitting here 

I trace no change — scarce any change at all. 

Some little work done, some formal knowledge gained, 
some passages of sweet or sad experience; 

But all these only outworks, falling ofiF, 

Leave me the same that I have been through life. 

(So little one life — so brief, slight, a thing.) 

Till now at length, feeling Thee gather round me close, 
Close, closer, closer yet. 

At last the bounds dissolve which kept us twain, 
And I and Thou are one, and I alone am not. 



After the Day's Work 

PASSING by, passing by all exteriors. 
Swimming floating on the Ocean that has innumer- 
able bays — 

I too at length nestle down in thy breast, O humanity; 
Tired I abandon myself to thee, to be washed from the 
dust of life in thy waves. 

I Saw a Vision 

I SAW a vision of Earth's multitudes going up and 
down over the Earth — and I saw the great earth itself 
wheeling and careering onward through space. 

And behold! here and there to one among the multi- 
tude a change came; 



314 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And to whomsoever it came continued onward apparently 
as before — yet as from the larva springs the perfect image, 

So (as it appeared to me) from that mortal form a new 
being, long long long in preparation, glided silently up un- 
observed into the breathless pure height of the sky. 



A 



Ah! Blessed is He 

H ! blessed is he that hath escaped — 

Whom love hath opened the doors of his cage: 
No more returning 
Shall he be subject again to sin and sorrow. 



I 



The Great Leader 

USE my name and powers, I use my great prestige, 
As a joiner uses a tool: they serve my purpose well 
Nevertheless think not that I regard them 
Except as things to be destroyed in using. 



I Accept You 

T ACCEPT you altogether — as the sea accepts the fish 
-■- that swim in it. 

It is no good apologising for anything you have done, 
for you have never been anywhere yet but what I have 
sustained you — 

And beyond my boundaries you cannot go. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 315 



Sol 



CORUSCATING flame I behold the soul, 
Mine, yours, whoever it may be — 
Darting great tongues of flame thousands of miles long, 
Thousands of years. 



A Glimpse 

HERE at last having arrived I take my rest, my long 
long fill of rest, no more to move; 
The roaring subsides, the wheels cease to go round, a 
calm falls on all — the stars and the daisies shine out visibly 
from the bosom of God. 

You cannot baulk me of my true life. 

Climbing over the barriers of pain — of my own weak- 
nesses and sins — I escape. 

Where will you hold me? by the feet, hands? by my 
personal vanity? would you shut me in the mirror-lined 
prison of self-consciousness? 

Behold ! I acknowledge all my defects — you cannot snap 
the handcuffs faster on me than I snap them myself. I 
am vain, deceitful, cowardly — yet I escape. 

The handcuffs hold me not, out of my own hands I draw 
myself as out of a glove; from behind the empty mask of 
my reputed qualities I depart, and am gone my way, 

Unconcerned what I leave behind me. 



3i6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Into the high air which surrounds and sustains the world, 
Breathing life, intoxicating, with joy unutterable, radiant, 
As the wind of Spring when the dead leaves fly before it — 
I depart and am gone my way. 



The Long Day in the Open 

HOUR after hour passes by, the Sun wheels on, the 
clouds disperse and re-form; 
On all I have to do thou lookest O Nature, I have 
nothing to conceal from thee; O Moon traveling so close 
over the hills. 

Dost thou not say what I have to say, are not our 
purposes one? 

The Idler 

I AM he that beholds and praises the universe. 
Singing all day like a bird among the branches. 
And the leaves put forth and the young buds burst 
asunder — yet I myself do nothing at all, 
But dwell in the midst of them, singing. 

In the Deep Cave of the Heart 

IN the deep cave of the heart, far down. 
Running under the outward shows of the world and 
of people, 

Running under geographies, continents, under the fields 
and the roots of the grasses and trees, under the little 
thoughts and dreams of men, and the history of races. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 317 

Deep, far down, 

I see feel and hear wondrous and divine things. 

Voices and faces are there; arms of lovers, known and 
unknown, reach forward and fold me; 

Words float, and fragrance of Time ascends, and Life 
ever circling. 



Fly messenger! through the streets of the cities ankle- 
plumed Mercury fly! 

Swift sinewy runner with arm held up on high! 
Naked along the wind, thy beautiful feet 
Glancing over the mountains, under the sun. 
By meadows and water-sides, — into the great towns like 
a devouring flame. 

Through slums and vapors and dismal suburban streets, 
With startling of innumerable eyes — fly, messenger, fly! 

Joy joy, the glad news! 

For he whom we wait is risen! 

He is descended among his children—^ 

He is come to dwell on the Earth! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 319 



The Coming of the Lord 

I HEARD a voice saying: 
Son of Man stretch forth thy hand over the earth — 
and over the sea-coasts and seas and cities of the earth : 

I, the King, am come to dwell in my own lands — I am 
descended among the children of men. 

[Blessed art thou whosoever from whose eyes the veil is 
lifted to see Me; 

Blessed are thy mornings and evenings — blessed the hour 
when thou risest up, and again when thou liest down to 
sleep.] 

Here on this rock in the sun, where the waves obedient 
wash at my feet, where the fisherman passing spreads his 
net on the sands, 

I the King sit waiting. 

This mountain is my throne — I breathe the incense of 
the myriad-laden meadows; 

The little white-washed cottages lie below me, and there 
my dwelling is also. 



See you not Me? though I stand In the height of heaven, 

Glorious in all forms, am I become as a nothing before 
you? 

Though I walk through the street with a basket on my 
arm, or leaning on a stick — or loiter in many disguises? 

See you not Me, 



320 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Who have looked in your eyes so long for that glance 
of recognition? 

Yet when you see me no form of maid or boy, or one 
mature or aged, 

Or the truth of anything shall escape you. 

In the streets of the cities, where the horses' hoofs sound 
hollow upon the asphalt, and the old woman sits by her 
tray, 

And the babble of voices goes by as you stand at the 
corner, 

I will pass with the rest — ^you shall see me and not 
mistake me. 

The woods no more shall be merely a cover for wild 
animals, or so much value in timber, nor the fields for their 
crops alone. 

For I have trodden them — they are holy — and my foot- 
prints are over all the land. 

Who walks in singleness of heart shall be my com- 
panion — I will reveal myself to him by ways that the 
learned understand not. 

Though he be poor and Ignorant I will be his friend 
— I will swear faithfulness to him, passing my lips to his, 
and my hand to betwixt his thighs. 



Where I pass, all my children know me. 

My feet tread naked the grass of the valleys, the trees 
know me by name — they hear my voice — the brook with 
heaped up waters rushes past me. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 321 

[O voices breaking out over the earth, O singing singing 
singing!] 

My sun shines glorious In heaven, and my moon to 
adorn the night; 

They are my right hand and my left hand — see you 
not Me between? 

■ [Hark! my children sing — all day and night they are 
singing!] 



O child — you whom I touch now, having watched over 
you so long, so long — 

Are you worthy to follow and behold me? 

Leaving all, leaving all behind. 

Caring no more for the world, for all your projects and 
purposes, than if you had been stunned by a blow on the 
head, 

Leaving all to me, absolutely all to me, 

Then may-be you shall see me. 

For though you shall carry on where you are placed, 
and shall not forsake your post, though you shall be un- 
wearied, giving all that you have out of love to the least 
capable of making a return, though you shall be active before 
the world, 

Yet shall you not act at all, not one single thing shall 
you do — but I will do It for you. 

After that the arrows shall not pierce you, nor the heavy 
rain wet you, the shafts of malice shall not penetrate to you, 



322 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

nor the fire though it consume your body shall consume you ; 

But the sun shall shine, and the faces glance each morn- 
ing afresh upon you, 

For joy, for joy — and joy. 

I the Lord Demos have spoken it: and the mountains 
are my throne. 

The Curse of Property 

ARE they not mine, saith the Lord, the everlasting hills? 
(Where over the fir-tree tops I glance to the valleys.) 
The rich meads w^ith brov^^n and white cattle, and streams 
with weirs and water-mills, 

And the tender-growing crops, and hollows of shining 
apple-blossom — 

From my mountain terraces as from a throne beholding 
my lands — 

Are they not mine, where I dwell, and for my children? 

How long, you, will you trail your slime over them, 
and your talk of rights and of property? 

How long will you build you houses to hide yourselves 
in, and your baggage? to shut yourselves off from your 
brothers and sisters — and Me? 

Beware! for I am the storm; I care nought for your 
rights of property. 

In lightning and thunder, in floods and fire, I will ruin 
and ravage your fields; 

Your first-born will I slay within your house, and I will 
make your riches a mockery. 

Fools! that know not from day to day, from hour to 
hour, if ye shall live, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 323 

And yet will snatch from each other the things that I 
have showered among you. 

For I will have none that will not open his door to 
all, treating others as I have treated him. 

The trees that spread their boughs against the evening 
sky, the marble that I have prepared beforehand these 
millions of years in the earth ; the cattle that roam over the 
myriad hills — they are Mine, for all my children — 

If thou lay hands on them for thyself alone, thou art 
accursed. 

The curse of propertyshall cling to thee; 

With burdened brow and heavy heart, weary, incapable 
of joy, without gaiety. 

Thou shalt crawl a stranger In the land that I made 
for thy enjoyment. 

The smallest bird on thy estate shall sing In freedom in 
the branches, the plough-boy shall whistle In the furrow, 

But thou shalt be weary and lonely — forsaken and an 
alien among men: 

For just inasmuch as thou hast shut thyself off from 
one of the least of these my children, thou hast shut thyself 
off from me. 

I the Lord Demos have spoken it — and the mountains 
are my throne. 

Over the Great City 

OVER the great city, 
Where the wind rustles through the parks and 
gardens. 



324 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

In the air, the high clouds brooding, 
In the lines of street perspective, the lamps, the traffic, 
The pavements and the innumerable feet upon them, 
I Am : make no mistake — do not be deluded. 

Think not because I do not appear at the first glance 
— because the centuries have gone by and there is no assured 
tidings of me — that therefore I am not there. 

Think not because all goes its own w^ay that therefore 
I do not go my own way through all. 

The fixed bent of hurrying faces In the street — each 
turned towards its own light, seeing no other — yet I am 
the Light towards which they all look. 

The toil of so many hands to such multifarious ends, 
yet my hand knows the touch and twining of them all. 

All come to me at last 

There is no love like mine; 

For all other love takes one and not another; 

And other love Is pain, but this Is joy eternal. 



Underneath and After All 

THERE Is no peace except where I am, saith the Lord. 
Though you have health — that which is called health 
— yet without me It Is only the fair covering of disease; 

Though you have love, yet If I be not between and 
around the lovers, is their love only torment and unrest; 

Though you have wealth and friends and home — all 
these shall come and go — there is nothing stable or secure, 
which shall not be taken away; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 325 

But I alone remain — I do not change. 

As space spreads everjrwhere, and all things move and 
change within it, but it moves not nor changes, 

So I am the space within the soul, of which the space 
without is but the similitude and mental image; 

Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to 
all life — death shall no longer divide thee from whom thou 
lovest. 

I am the sun that shines upon all creatures from within 
— gazest thou upon me thou shalt be filled with joy eternal. 

Be not deceived. Soon this outer world shall drop off — 
thou shalt slough it away as a man sloughs his mortal body. 

Learn even now to spread thy wings in that other world 
— the world of Equality — to swim in the ocean, my child, 
of Me and my love. 

[Ah! have I not taught thee by the semblances of this 
outer world, by its alienations and deaths and mortal suffer- 
ings — all for this? 

For joy, ah! joy unutterable!] 

Him who is not detained by mortal adhesions, who walks 
in this world yet not of it. 

Taking part in everything with equal mind, with free 
limbs and senses unentangled — 

Giving all, accepting all, using all, enjoying all, asking 
nothing, shocked at nothing — 

Whom love follows everywhere, but he follows not it— 

Him all creatures worship, all men and women bless. 

It is for this that the body exercises its tremendous 
attraction — that mortal love torments and tears asunder the 
successive generations of mankind — 

That underneath and after all the true men and women 
may appear, by long experience emancipated. 



326 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

A Hard Saying 

WHO loves the mortal creature, ending there, is no 
more free — he has given himself away to Death — 
For him the slimy black Form lies in wait at every turn, 
befouling the universe; 

Yet he who loves must love the mortal, and he who 
would love perfectly must be free: 

[Love — glorious though it be — is a disease as long as 
it destroys or even impairs the freedom of the soul.] 

Therefore if thou wouldst love, withdraw thyself from 
love: 

Make it thy slave, and all the miracles of nature shall 
lie in the palm of thy hand. 

Not for a Few Months or Years 

THINK not that that which is growing inside you as you 
battle with these words is for a few months or years, 
Or that it will find its rest and satisfaction in the things 
for which the world is so busy striving. 

Food ease lust knowledge fame — 'twill pasture up as 
nonchalantly as a dog, and look in your face for more. 

They shall not satisfy it. The list of all the things 
that can be named shall not satisfy it. 

Disentanglement 

BE not torn by desire: 
When burning clinging love assails thee — like a red- 
hot thing which sticks to the flesh it scorches — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 327 

Beware ! 

For love is good and lust is good — but not to tear and 
rend thee. 

Slowly and resolutely — as a fly cleans its legs of the 
honey in which it has been caught — 

So remove thou, if it only be for a time, every particle 
which sullies the brightness of thy mind; 

Return into thyself — content to give, but asking no one, 
asking nothing; 

In the calm light of His splendor who fills all the uni- 
verse, the imperishable indestructible of ages, 

Dwell thou — as thou canst dwell — contented. 



Now understand me well: 

There is no desire or indulgence that is forbidden; 
there is not one good and another evil — all are alike in 
that respect; 

In place all are to be used. 

Yet in using be not entangled in them ; for then already 
they are bad, and will cause thee suffering. 

When thy body — as needs must happen at times — is car- 
ried along on the wind of passion, say not thou, "I desire 
this or that" ; 

For the "I" neither desires nor fears anything, but is 
free and in everlasting glory, dwelling in heaven and pouring 
out joy like the sun on all sides. 

Let not that precious thing by any confusion be drawn 



328 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

down and entangled in the world of opposites, and of 
Death and suffering. 

For as a light-house beam sweeps with incredible speed 
over sea and land, yet the lamp itself moves not at all, 

So while thy body of desire is (and must be by the 
law of its nature) incessantly in motion in the world of 
suffering, the 'T' high up above is fixed in heaven. 

Therefore I say let no confusion cloud thy mind about 
this matter; 

But ever when desire knocks at thy door, 

Though thou grant it admission and entreat it hospi- 
tably, as in duty bound. 

Fence it yet gently off from thy true self, 

Lest it should tear and rend thee. 



And him thou lovest or her thou lovest — 

If without confusion thou beholdest such one fixed like 
a star in heaven, and ever in thy most clinging burning 
passion rememberest Whom thou lovest. 

Then art thou blessed beyond words, and thy love is 
surely eternal; 

But if by confusion thou knowest not whom thou lovest 
— but seest only the receptacle of desire which inhabits the 
world of change and suffering — 

Then shalt thou be whirled and gulfed in a sea of 
torment, and shalt travel far and be many times lost upon 
that ocean before thou shalt know what is the true end of 
thy voyage. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 329 



The Mortal Lover 

THIS Is the little mortal lover In whose heart the low 
scorching flame of rejected love burns night and day, 
withering all his life. 

In vain the great mountains and the sea, In vain the 
sun in heaven, in vain all faces offer themselves; 

There is no rest: only death and annihilation for every 
thing that is born ; 

Only a corpse swinging up-river with the tide among 
the mud-banks, and swinging down again with the ebb; 

And the tide ebbing and flowing aimlessly for ever in 
a land where all are dead. 

He lies awake all night and strains his eyes for a glimmer 
of light, but there is none; 

Every pursuit, every hope, all of life, is a mockery — 
he has been gulled into existence. 

We have been brought here (he says), a mass of sen- 
sitive capacities, to behold a possible satisfaction — then to 
be trampled underfoot like worms, without redemption, 
never again to know each other or ourselves. 

The heart aches and burns In slow torture, the sounds 
of daily life are a mockery, the pursuits of men are like the 
laughter of maniacs playing on the brink of a precipice. 

Millions and millions approach the edge — a vast body 
always moving on from behind; 

The gulf is measureless in depth, but the young and 
those who are in the rear know not of it — they only feel 



330 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the vast onward movement, and w^Ith loud chants and 
rollicking songs march gaily confidently on; 

Then suddenly those who are older and nearing the edge 
behold the horrible and naked truth — they see the avalanche 
of human beings for ever going over into the abyss; 

With shouts and cries of warning they turn upon those 
that are behind: but it is useless, they too are pushed on 
relentlessly ; 

Behind is a babel of sounds, cries of Forward, Progress, 
God, Immortality, and the like; around are shrieks and 
despairing threats, curses and plaintive unheeded warnings; 
before is the abyss of oblivion, 

Into which countless generations before have gone, and 
we must go; 

And this is the hell of existence. 

He lies awake all night with pain gnawing at his heart, 
and strains his eyes for a glimmer of light, but there is 
none. 



The End of Love 

SEEK not the end of love in this act or in that act — lest 
indeed it become the end; 
But seek this act and that act and thousands of acts 
whose end is love — 

So shalt thou at last create that which thou now desirest ; 
And then when these are all past and gone there shall 
remain to thee a great and Immortal possession, which no 
man can take away. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 331 

A New Life 

HENCEFORTH I propound a new life for you — that 
you should bring the peace and grace of Nature into 
all your daily life — being freed from vain striving. 

The freed soul, passing disengaged into the upper air, 
forgetful of self. 

Rising again In others, ever knowing itself again in 
others. 

The villa stands with Its picturesque gables and garden, 
its rhododendrons all in flower, and exotic firs, with clumps 
of tulips; 

The ploughman to his horses clicks and calls all day 
in the midst of the vocal landscape; 

The rivers wind lazily about the land ; the slow air 
floats on from the West and South, bringing on its bosom 
long-promised gifts. 

Out of houses and closed rooms, out of the closed prison 
of self which you have inhabited so long; 

Into the high air which circles round the world, the 
region of human equality, 

With outspread wings balanced, resting on that which 
is not self, 

Floating high up as a condor over the mountains in 
aerial suspense, 

Or as an eagle flying screaming over the cities of the 
earth, with joy delirious — 

So passing enfranchised shall you regain after long cap- 
tivity 

Your own your native abode. 



332 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The Law of Equality 

YOU cannot violate the law of Equality for long. 
Whatever you appropriate to yourself now from 
others, by that you will be poorer in the end; 

What you give now, the same will surely come back 
to you. 

If you think yourself superior to the rest, in that instant 
you have proclaimed your own inferiority; 

And he that will be servant of all, helper of most, by 
that very fact becomes their lord and master. 

Seek not your own life — for that is death; 

But seek how you can best and most joyfully give your 
own life away — and every morning for ever fresh life shall 
come to you from over the hills. 

Man has to learn to die — quite simply and naturally — 
as the child has to learn to walk. 

The life of Equality the grave cannot swallow — any 
more than the finger can hold back running water — it flows 
easily around and over all obstacles. 

A little while snatching to yourself the goods of the earth, 
jealous of your own credit, and of the admiration and ap- 
plause of men, 

Then to learn that you cannot defeat Nature so — that 
water will not run up hill for all your labors and lying 
awake at night over it: 

The claims of others as good as yours, their excellence 
in their own line equal to your best in yours, their life as 
near and dear to you as your own can be. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 333 

So letting go all the chains which bound you, all the 
anxieties and cares, 

The wearisome burden, the artificial unyielding armor 
wherewith you would secure yourself, but which only weighs 
you down a more helpless mark for the enemy — 

Having learned the necessary lesson of your own 
identity — 

To pass out, free, O joy! — free, to flow down, to swim 
In the sea of Equality — 

To endue the bodies of the divine Companions, 

And the life which is eternal. 



To Thine Own Self Be True 

NOT by running out of yourself after it comes the love 
which lasts a thousand years. 

If to gain another's love you are untrue to yourself then 
are you also untrue to the person whose love you would gain. 

Him or her whom you seek will you never find that way 
— and what pleasure you have with them will haply only 
end In pain. 

Remain stedfast, knowing that each prisoner has to en- 
dure In patience till the season of his liberation ; when the 
love comes which is for you it will turn the lock easily and 
loose your chains — 

Being no longer whirled about nor tormented by winds 
of uncertainty, but part of the organic growth of God him- 
self In Time — 

Another column In the temple of immensity, 

Two voices added to the eternal ':hoIr. 



334 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



T 



Abandon Hope All Ye That Enter Here 
O die — for this into the world you came. 



Yes, to abandon more than you ever conceived as possible : 

All ideals, plans — even the very best and most unselfish 
— all hopes and desires. 

All formulas of morality, all reputation for virtue or 
consistency or good sense; all cherished theories, doctrines, 
systems of knowledge, 

Modes of life, habits, predilections, preferences, superiori- 
ties, weaknesses, indulgences. 

Good health, wholeness of limb and brain, youth, man- 
hood, age — nay life itself — in one word: To die — 

For this into the world you came. 

All to be abandoned, and when they have been finally 
abandoned, 

Then to return to be used — and then only to be rightly 
used, to be free and open for ever. 



To One Dead 

YOU must look at your own body lying Head there quite 
calmly — 
[If you have ever loved and quietly surrendered that 
love you will understand what I mean] — 

The dear fingers and feet, the eyes; you have looked in 
so often — they are yours no longer ; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 335 

You are not bound to them, you are something else 

than you thought. 

Now you see that these things are only a similitude: 

A new and wonderful life opens out — so wonderful, 

O so wonderful! 

Those eyes whose answer once you forebore to ask for 
— do you remember how after all, how wide and wonderful 
at last they opened upon you, shining up for you (yes for 
you) from depths you saw not In them before? 

And that body which now you have forsaken, so now 
for the first time do you understand it and its life (all the 
old passages in it so clear, so real, so wonderful, so trans- 
parent) ; 

Now it radiates back upon you what you are — of whom 
it is only the similitude; 

And even so it is only one of your similitudes. 



Of All the Suffering 

OF all the suffering — 
(Think think of it, and learn what Freedom is) — 
All the weary disappointed faces. 

The lives narrowed down, the dark and joyless prospect. 
Capacities stunted that might have been developed, hope 
gone, the cross of anguish on the forehead; 

Of the fair might-have-been, the lips so loved that Death 
has hid from view, 

The dread inexorable past, the nothing left to live for, 
Age empty purposeless — a mere cold husk — 
Death coming slow, with pain and foul disease, 



336 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Of all the cruelty of one to another, 

Slights that cut the heart's tenderest chords, words said 
that can never be unsaid; 

Of the deliberate cruelty of savages and half-formed peo- 
ple, gloating in revenge, or amused by others* pain; 

The victim staked out horizontally on the ground, the 
little fires built beside or under his arms and legs, or upon 
his breast. 

The careful ingenious torture lasting for hours, the jeers, 
the diabolic laughter — the moaning of the deserted and half- 
charred remnant through the long night — the stars looking 
on; 

Of the thousands languishing in prisons, slow^ly succumb- 
ing through all mental tortures into madness; 

Of the millions over w^hom the dread nIght-mares hang 
— deaths, partings, exiles. Illness, pain and persecution — 
the brief respite in sleep, the w^aklng to despair: 

Think think of these, and learn what Freedom is. 

Of all the delusion of thinking oneself apart from others 
— and all the needless torment that springs from it; 

Of the fear that one might somehow tumble out of the 
world of Existence — dying oneself while others lived on; 

Of the lightning-flashes of love which fitfully and for a 
moment to dazed wanderers reveal the truth; 

Of after pain endured the Immense and widened outlook; 

Of the poor little thing that shuts itself in its own cell, 
and then looks forth with anxious eyes upon the world — 
as though there were no escape — tossed by winds of Chance, 
subject to Death and Dissolution: 

The little primitive cell that grows and differentiates 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 337 

and grows till that which was in it attains at last to Man- 
hood and Deliverance; 

Of all the beating about in the dark round the walls 
of one's prison, yet never hitting the secret door of exit; 

Of all the sorrow and blindness that inveil for a time 
the unformed embryonic creature — 

Inveil fatally and forethoughtfully for ends glorious 
beyond all mortal imagination: 

Think think of these and learn what Freedom is. 

A Long Journey 

THE long insatiable yearning of the mortal creature, 
for absolute union — never accomplished ; 
Each rhortal love the symbol, the promise, and the part- 
fulfilment of that for which all life exists. 

Not this year or next, not this life or perhaps the next, 
But day by day and day by day as long as thou art, 
pass thou nearer to that great joy. 

Here too (as so often said before) it is no matter of 
chance: 

It is not that these are lucky having found their mates, 
and thou art unfortunate standing alone (for they have not 
found their mates, and thou standest not alone) ; 

But every day and every day (for thee as well as for them 
and all) the way lies on before — to be slowly accomplished — 

To make thyself fit for the perfect love which awaits 
and which alone can satisfy thee. 

Lo! that divine body which dwells within thy mortal 
body, slowly preparing its own deliverance — 



338 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

What is all suffering before that? to surrender this is 
but to open the way for that — 'tis but the law of Equality. 

Begin to-day to walk the path which alone is gain ; 

In the sunshine, as the sunshine, calm contented and 
blessed, envying no one, railing not, repining not; 

Receiving -the message of the patient trees and herbs, 
and of the creatures of the earth, and of the stars above; 

Possessing all within thyself, with showers of beauties 
and blessings every moment — to scatter again to others with 
free hand; 

Neither hurrying nor slackening, but sure of thy great 
and glorious destiny, walk thou — 

And presently all around thee shalt thou see the simili- 
tude of him whom thou seekest: 

He shall send a multitude of messengers in advance to 
cheer thee on thy way. 



The Secret of Time and Satan 

IS there one in all the world who does not desire tc be 
divinely beautiful? 
To have the most perfect body — unerring skill, strength, 
limpid clearness of mind, as of the sunlight over the hills. 

To radiate love wherever he goes, to move in and out, 
accepted ? 

The secret lies close to you, so close. 

You are that person; it lies close to you, so close — 
deep down within — 

But in Time it shall come forth and be revealed. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 339 

Not by accumulating riches, but by giving away what 
you have, 

Shall you become beautiful; 

You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in 
fresh ones; 

Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body 
sound and healthy, but rather by discarding them; 

Not by multiplying knowledge shall you beautify your 
mind; 

It is not the food that you eat that has to vivify you, 
but you that have to vivify the food. 

Always emergence, and the parting of veils for the hidden 
to appear; 

The child emerges from its mother*s body, and out of 
that body again In time another child. 

When the body which thou now hast falls away, another 
body shall be already prepared beneath, 
And beneath that again another. 

Always that which appears last in time is first, and the 
cause of all — and not that which appears first. 



Freedom has to be won afresh every morning. 

Every morning thou must put forth thy strength afresh 
upon the world, to create out of chaos the garden In which 
thou walkest. 

(Behold! I love thee — I wait for thee In thine own gar- 
den, lingering till eventide among the bushes ; 

I tune the lute for thee; I prepare my body for thee, 
bathing unseen In the limpid waters.) 



340 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



Wondrous is Man — the human body: to understand and 
possess this, to create it every day afresh, is to possess all 
things. 

The tongue and all that proceeds from it: spoken and 
written words, languages, commands, controls, the electric 
telegraph girdling the earth ; 

The eyes ordaining, directing; the feet and all that they 
indicate — the path they travel for years and years ; 

The passions of the body, the belly and the cry for food, 
the heaving breasts of love, the phallus, the fleshy thighs. 

The erect proud head and neck, the sturdy back, and 
knees well-knit or wavering; 

All the interminable attitudes and what they indicate; 

Every relation of one man to another, every cringing, 
bullying, lustful, obscene, pure, honorable, chaste, just and 
merciful ; 

The fingers differently shaped according as they handle 
money for gain or for gift; 

All the different ramifications and institutions of society 
which proceed from such one difference in the crook of a 
finger ; 

All that proceed from an arrogant or a slavish contour 
of the neck; 

All the evil that goes forth from any part of a man's 
body which is not possessed by himself, all the devils let 
loose — from a twist of the tongue or a leer of the eye, or 
the unmanly act of any member — and swirling into society; 
all the good which gathers round a man who is clean and 
strong — the threads drawing from afar to the tips of his 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 341 

fingers, the interpretations in his eyes, all the love which 
passes through his limbs into heaven : 

What it is to command and be Master of this wondrous 
body with all its passions and powers, to truly possess it — 
that it is to command and possess all things, that it is to 
create. 



The art of creation, like every other art, has to be learnt. 

Slowly slowly, through many years, thou buildest up thy 
body, 

And the power that thou now hast (such as it is) to 
build up this present body, thou hast acquired in the past 
in other bodies; 

So in the future shalt thou use again the power that 
thou now acquirest. 

But the power to build up the body includes all powers. 

Do not be dismayed because thou art yet a child of chance, 
and at the mercy greatly both of Nature and fate; 

Because if thou wert not subject to chance, then wouldst 
thou be Master of thyself ; but since thou art not yet Master 
of thine own passions and powers, in that degree must thou 
needs be at the mercy of some other power. 

And if thou choosest to call that power "Chance," well 
and good. It is the angel with whom thou hast to wrestle. 



Beware how thou seekest this for thyself and that for thy- 
self. I do not say Seek not; but Beware how thou seekest. 



342 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

For a soldier who Is going a campaign does not seek 
what fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather 
what he can leave behind; 

Knowing well that every additional thing which he can- 
not freely use and handle is an impediment to him. 

So if thou seekest fame or ease or pleasure or aught for 
thyself, the image of that thing which thou seekest will 
come and cling to thee — and thou wilt have to carry it 
about, 

And the Images and powers which thou hast thus evoked 
will gather round and form for thee a new body— clamoring 
for sustenance and satisfaction; 

And if thou art not able to discard this image now, 
thou wilt not be able to discard that body then: but wilt 
have to carry It about. 

Beware then lest it become thy grave and thy prison 
— instead of thy winged abode, and palace of joy. 

For (over and over again) there is nothing that Is evil 
except because a man has not mastery over it; and there is 
no good thing that Is not evil If It have a mastery over a 
man; 

And there Is no passion or power, or pleasure or pain, or 
created thing whatsoever, which is not ultimately for man 
and for his use — or which he need be afraid of, or ashamed 
at. 

The ascetics and the self-indulgent divide things into good 
and evil — as it were to throw away the evil; 

But things cannot be divided into good and evil, but all 
are good so soon as they are brought into subjection. 

And seest thou not that except for Death thou couldst 
never overcome Death — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 343 

For since by being a slave to things of sense thou hast 
clothed thyself with a body which thou art not master of, 
thou wert condemned to a living tomb were that body 
not to be destroyed. 

But now through pain and suffering out of this tomb 
shalt thou come; and through the experience thou hast 
acquired shalt build thyself a new and better body; 

And so on many times, till thou spreadest wings and 
hast all powers diabolic and angelic concentred in thy flesh. 



And so at last I saw Satan appear before me — magni- 
ficent, fully formed. 

Feet first, with shining limbs, he glanced down from 
above among the bushes. 

And stood there erect, dark-skinned, with nostrils dilated 
with passion ; 

(In the burning intolerable sunlight he stood, and I in 
the shade of the bushes) ; 

Fierce and scathing the effluence of his eyes, and scornful 
of dreams and dreamers (he touched a rock hard by and 
it split with a sound like thunder) ; 

Fierce the magnetic influence of his dusky flesh ; his 
great foot, well-formed, was planted firm in the sand — with 
spreading toes; 

"Come out," he said with a taunt. "Art thou afraid to 
meet me?" 

And I answered not, but sprang upon him and smote him. 

And he smote me a thousand times, and brashed and 
scorched and slew me as with hands of flame; 



344 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And I was glad, for my body lay there dead; and I 
sprang upon him again with another body; 

And he turned upon me, and smote me a thousand 
times and slew that body; 

And I was glad and sprang upon him again with another 
body — 

And with another and another and again another; 

And the bodies which I took on yielded before him, and 
were like cinctures of flame upon me, but I flung them aside; 

And the pains which I endured in one body were powers 
which I wielded in the next; and I grew in strength, till 
at last I stood before him complete, with a body like his 
own and equal in might — exultant in pride and joy. 

Then he ceased, and said, **I love thee." 

And lo! his form changed, and he leaned backwards and 
drew me upon him, 

And bore me up into the air, and floated me over the 
topmost trees and the ocean, and round the curve of the 
earth under the moon — 

Till we stood again in Paradise. 



Brief Is Pain 

("Kurz ist der Schmerz, und enuig isi die Freude") 

SLOWLY, out of all life unfolded, the supreme joy; 
Over all storms, above the clouds, beyond Night and 
the shadow of the Earth, 

The Sun in the blue aether changeless shining. 

Grief passes, sorrow endures for a moment: 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 345 

To a certain stage belonging it dogs the footsteps of the 
individual ; 

Then fading and passing it leaves him free, a new crea- 
ture, transfigured to more than mortal. 

The myriad spindles of the grass reflecting the light, 
the long and level meadows waving to the breeze. 

The faint haze of summer, blue in deep shadows of the 
foliage. 

The toilers toiling in the fields, the bathers to the water 
descending or standing on the banks in the sunlight, 

The secret that lies wrapt in the summer noon and the 
slow evolution of races. 

The which what voice can utter, what words avail to 
frame it? 

Not pleasure alone is good, but pain also; not joy alone 
but sorrow; 

Freed must the psyche be from the pupa, and pain is 
there to free it. 

Throes and struggles and clenchings of teeth — but pain 
is there to free it. 

Lo! the prison walls must fall — even though the prison 
tremble. 

Long the strain, sometimes seeming past endurance — then 
the dead shell gives way, and a new landscape discloses. 

Curtain behind curtain, wall behind wall, life behind life ; 

Dying here, to be born there, passing and passing and 
passing, 

At last a new creature behold, transfigured to more than 
mortal ! 



346 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

For brief after all is pain, but joy ah! joy is eternal! 
And thin the veil that divides, the subtle film of illusion — 
The prison-wall so slight, at a touch it parts and crumbles, 
And opens at length on the sunlit w^orld and the w^inds 
of heaven. 



The Body and the Book! 

THE chambers are all in order, all the doors stand open. 
Enter Thou — this is the house that I have stored 
for thee among the rest: 
To all that is here thou art vi^elcome. 

But for me ask not. 

Once w^hen th^ house w^as closed I dwelt here — a prisoner ; 

But now that it is open — all open — I have passed out, 

Into the beautiful air, over the fields, over the world, 
through a thousand homes — journeying with the wind — 
O so light and joyous, 

Light and invisible, 

I have passed, and my house is behind me. 

Ask not for the prisoner, for he is not here; 
Ask not for the free, for thou canst not find him. 
Go back thou too and set thy house in order, 
Open thy doors, let them stand wide for all to enter — 
thy treasures, let the poorest take of them; 

Then come thou forth to where I wait for thee. 



Part IV 
WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART 



Because the starry liffhtnings and the life 
Of all this Universe which is our Home 

Weave round each soul a weh of mortal strife. 
Hard is its speech to hear and slow to come. 

As to one waking from a lonely dream 
The friendly taper dwindles to a star. 

So to each man mens faces distant seem — 
Their dearest words sound faint and very far. 

Daily we pass, like shadows in dreamland. 
And careless answer in the old curt tone. 

Till Death breaks suddenly between us, and 
With a great cry we know we have not known. 

Ah! surely, to have known and to behold 
The beauty that within the soul abides. 

For this Earth blossoms and the skies unfold. 
For this the Moon makes music in the tides. 

For this Man rises from his mould of dust. 
Ranges his life and looks upon the Sun, 

For this he turns and with adventurous trust 
Forsakes this world and seeks a fairer one. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 349 

Who Shall Command the Heart 

WHO shall command the heart, that wondrous Thing, 
That wild love-creature, roaming the wilderness, 
That none can tame? 

Roaming the world, devouring with eyes of flame, eyes 
of desire, 

All forms of heavenly Beauty? 

Say, little heart, that beatest pulsest here beneath the 
ribs. 

Who chained thee in this body? — what Titan ages 
agone ? — 

Who muzzled thee to drive this crank machine, 

Thou wanderer of the woods, thou crimson leopard, 

No better than a turnspit? 

Nay, but thy 'prenticeship long enough surely thou hast 
served ; 

The time has come, and thy full age and strength ; 

The cage-bars held no longer, and the body-machine 
breaks down; 

But thou art young and beautiful as ever. 

Wild pard who lovest thus to hunt with Man, 

I bid thee loose. 

Say, wilt thou come with me, and shall we ride, 

Companions of the Chaste, the universe over? 



350 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



B 



From Caverns Dark 

EHOLD, a hundred and a thousand lives, 
And thousands more, in caverns dark within thee. 
No secret wish that flits along thy fancy. 
But lo! far back in some ancestral form 
It dwelt, had eyes and feet, and ranged its life: 
No thought, no dream, but long-dead men and women 
Live in the quiet murmur of its wings 
Far down, far down, and move about thy brain 
And look on the Sun again. 

Ah, silence! hearest not the whispering 

In darkness, of those countless multitudes? — 

That maiden fair who languished out her soul, 

Long generations back, and spake no word ; 

That father whose young daughter to the grave 

Bore down his heart with hers; that sturdy soldier 

Who hacked and hewed in fervent piety 

All who opposed him ; that untiring mother 

Who wore her life out for her children; aye, 

And all the throngs that passed thro' city streets 

Centuries gone, 'neath overhanging gables, 

Or toiled on rustic leas — the cleric youth 

Who dreamed romance in manuscript and missal, 

Gurth herding pigs and whittling bow and arrows 

In beechen forests; haughty baron, and serf. 

And vain and timid and night-mare-ridden souls, 

And trustful, proud, ambitious — all are there! 

Hearest the whispering of multitudes? — 

All dead — yet all are there. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 351 

And ages farther, born of the time before man walked 

the earth, 

Wild forms behold ! and roaming spirits of animals, 
Hungering, thirsting, loving — beautiful beings 
That saw and wondered worshiping each other, 
And found their mates and fought their enemies. 
And sang and danced and hoarded, skulked and scolded, 
In passion's every mood ; yet never once 
Turned eyes of consciousness upon themselves. 
Unwieldy beasts that bellowed through the tree-ferns for 

their young, 

And flying dragons and the roaring lion. 

And bats and moths just glimmering thro' the dark 

Like faintest memories — aye, all are there! 

Hearest the whispering of multitudes?— 

All dead — ^yet all are there. 

And in the ages yet to come the same: 

A hundred and a thousand lives within thee! 

And thousands more — which yet shall walk the Earth. 

Dreams, faint desires, scarce conscious of themselves 

Shall take swift shape and people the lands with forms 

Of thy conceiving, strange similitudes 

Even of thyself. 

And, hungering thirsting loving, beautiful beings 

Sprung from thy heart and brain and sexual part, 

Half animal, half angel. 

Shall see and wonder worshiping each other; 

And find their mates and front their enemies 

Onward through long processions of the Suns, 

By shores of other continents than now, 

In unimagined haunts and cities fair. 



352 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

To where they fade from view and take at last 
Their flight from Earth to homes beyond the Earth. 
This mighty Life — past present and to come — 
Enfolds thee. This thou art. This thou upgatherest; 
And this Thou, tiny creature, pourest forth — 
Where now thou standest — 
Lord of the world from caverns dark within thee. 



The Lake of Beauty 

LET your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the 
world, and the immense the boundless treasures that 
it holds in store. 

All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, 
all that your Nature so specially fits you for — that or the 
counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for 
you. It will surely come to you. 

Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed 
time will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching 
out of hands will make no difference. 

Therefore do not begin that game at all. 

Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this 
direction and in that, lest you become like a spring lost 
and dissipated in the desert. 

But draw them together into a little compass, and hold 
them still, so still; 

And let them become clear, so clear — so limpid, so mirror- 
like; 

At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves 
in peaceful beauty, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 353 

And the antelope shall descend to drink, and to gaze 
at his reflected image, and the lion to quench his thirst, 

And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch 
his own likeness in you. 



The Wandering Psyche 

YOU, who un-united to yourself roam about the world, 
Seeking some person or some thing to which to be 
united — 

Seeking to ease that way the pain at your heart — 
Deceive not yourself, deceive not others. 

For united to that which you really are you are indeed 
beautiful, united to Yourself you are strong, united to your- 
self you are already in the hearts of those you love; 
But disunited you are none of these things — 
And how shall men desire a mere shell, or how will you 
offer them a husk saying. There is fruit within, when there 
is no fruit — but only vacancy? 

And these are the Gods that seek ever to come in the 
forms of men — the ageless immortal Gods — to make of earth 
that Paradise by their presence — 

But while you bar the way and weave your own little 
plans and purposes like a tangle of cobwebs across the inner 
door. 

How shall they make their entrance and habitation with 
you? 

How shall you indeed know what it is to be Yourself? 



354 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



I Hear Thy Call, Mysterious Being 

I HEAR thy call, Mysterious Being; 
In the dead of night, when the stars float grey over- 
head, and the Northern lights flicker faintly, 

In the blazing noon when the sunlight rims with a lumi- 
nous ring the wide horizon, 
Flooding, enfolding all — 
I hear thy call. 

In the hollow depths below — I hear thee, Mysterious 
Being. 

[I am swept out, as the tide to the call of the Moon is 
swept out from the shores It knows — to wonderful other 
shores ; 

I am carried away, away, in a swoon to the ends of 
Creation.] 

Deep, deep Is Thy heart. As I sink in it, lo! there is 
nothing, nothing which Is not held by thy love. 

On the surface there Is rejection and discrimination, but 
in the depth lo! everything is held by it. 

Swift, swift is Thy flight. In an Instant now here, now 
there — It Is all the same to Thee. 

As the lambent fire of sex within the body, as the 
Northern lights with luminous fingers over the sky — 

So Thou through all creation. 

As the great Sun blazing down at noon on the Hima- 
layan forests, and bathing each leaf the same for hundreds, 
thousands, of miles — 

So Thou through all creation. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 355 

[Flutter on little leaves — ye that break the light Into 
a million beautiful forms! 

Flutter on little worlds, that float in the ether of space! 

Flutter on little hearts, whom the great Heart feeds and 
encloses!] 

And thou, O stranger who dwellest perchance in yonder 
star, or globe that circles dark about yon star, 

Or thou, dear lover that on this earth of ours boldest 
my heart in thine. 

Can Death, I say, or Space or Time or Worlds avail 
in the end against us? 

Take me, great Life — O take me, long-delaying. 

Unloose these chains, unbind these clogs and fetters: 

I hear thy call — so strange — Mysterious Being, 

I hear thy call — I come. 



So Thin a Veil 

SO thin a veil divides 
Us from such joy, past words. 

Walking in daily life — the business of the hour, each 
detail seen to; 

Yet carried, rapt away, on what sweet floods of other 
Being: 

Swift streams of music flowing, light far back through all 
Creation shining. 

Loved faces looking — 

Ah! from the true, the mortal self 

So thin a veil divides! 



356 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



The Open Secret 

SWEET secret of the open air — 
That waits so long, and always there, unheeded. 

Something uncaught, so free, so calm large confident — 
The floating breeze, the far hills and broad sky. 
And every little bird and tiny fly or flower 
At home in the great whole, nor feeling lost at all or 
forsaken. 
Save man — slight man! 

He, Cain-like from the calm eyes of the Angels, 

In houses hiding, in huge gas-lighted offices and dens, 
in ponderous churches. 

Beset with darkness, cowers; 

And like sorne hunted criminal torments his brain 

For fresh means of escape, continually; 

Builds thicker higher walls, ramparts of stone and gold, 
piles flesh and skins of slaughtered beasts, 

'Twixt him and that he fears; 

Fevers himself with plans, works harder and harder, 

And wanders far and farther from the goal. 

And still the great World waits by the door as ever, 
The great World stretching endlessly on every hand, in 
deep on deep of fathomless content — 

Where sing the Morning-stars in joy together, 
And all things are at home. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 357 



The Songs of the Birds, Who Hears 

THE songs of the birds, who hears? in the high trees 
calling. 

All the long noon high calling? — 

In the meadows below them the wind runs over the 
grass, the shadows lengthen. 

Who sees, who hears? — 

In the wonderful height of heaven the clouds are flocked 
like sails, 

Slow moving, floating, rounding from deep to deep. 

The light swims slowly, changing over the world. 

The distant peaks are touched ; and the hills lie silent. 

Who sees, who hears? 

The fox-gloves tall out of the earth arise ; 

They stand up out of green shadow; 

Out of night, out of seeds dim in the earth arising, 

They look forth on the blue and green wilderness, and 
are changed as it changes — 

Changed out of all recognition. 

Who sees, who hears? — 

For all things melt and run — if you only watch them 
long enough! 

And you cannot emprison anything in one shape — it will 
surely give you the slip. 

Nothing in essence dies, and nothing in mortal form 
remains. All is in movement, long calculated, long deter- 
mined on, with regard to another kind of Form. 

The diamond that you wear in your hair, the gold piece 



358 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

you hold so solid in your hand — they are no more solid than 
a swarm of bees is solid — of which the units are in constant 
motion to and fro, some leaving and some joining the swarm. 
They have other business than yours to attend to — they 
have other spheres beside the market and the drawing-room 
— and they will surely give you the slip. 

The rocks flow and the mountain shapes flow, 
And the forests swim over the lands like cloud-shadows: 
The lines of the seeming-everlasting sea are changed, 
And its waves beat on unmapped phantom shores: 
"Not here, not here!" 

All creatures fade from the embraces of their names, 
[And you and I, slow, slowly disentangling,] 
The delicate hairbells quivering in the light, 
The gorse, the heather, and the fox-gloves tall, 
The m.eadows, and the river, rolling, fade: 
Fade from their likenesses: fade crying 'Follow! 
Follow, for ever follow!' 

Who hears, who sees? 

WTio hears the word of Nature? 

The word of her eternal breathing, whispered wherever 
one shall listen. 

The word of the birds in the high trees calling, 

Of the wind running over the grass. 

The word of the glad prisoners, the tender footless crea- 
tures, the plants of the earth. 

Rising too, bright-eyed, out of their momentary masks? 

'Not here! not here!' 

But over all the world, shadowing, shadowing: 

The dream ! the vast and ever present miracle of all time ! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 359 

The long-forgotten never-forgotten goal! 

Over your own heart, out of its secretest depths: 

In crystalline beauty! 

Out of all creatures, cloud and mountain and river: 

Exhaling, ascending! 

From plant and bird and man and planet up-pouring: 

Thousand-formed One, 

The ever-present only present reality, source of all illu- 
sion, 

The Self, the disclosure, the transfiguration of each crea- 
ture. 

And goal of its agelong pilgrimage. 



A Child at a Window 

I SAT in the dark, at night, outside a little cottage door, 
And the light from within streamed through the case- 
ment and broke in spray upon the climbing ivy-leaves. 

And presently, overhead, a chamber-window opened, and 
a child peeped silently forth. 

And looked up into the vast night and at the all-trembling 
stars. 

And at the same moment, in a far far globe wheeling un- 
seen round a certain star, a child-face peeped forth from 
its habitation, and looked out into the night, even in the 
direction of the first child; 

And in other globes other faces looked farth ; 

But they all shrank back and trembled, seeing nothing but 
vacancy, and saying. How dark, how vast, how awful is the 
Night! 



36o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Yet all the while it was the great Day of the universe 
into which they looked, 
Lit by a million suns. 



Night 

DARKNESS overhead, around, 
A curtain closing down upon the earth, 

Drowning the woodland tree-tops. 

Stretching of hands, straining of eyes — to feel, to see, 

To catch the faint faint glamor here and there amid the 
branches, 

The wavering dubious forms and presences. 

No floor, no sky, no sound. Only a soft warm moisture 
in the nostrils. 

Folding and brooding all the land in silence. 



o 



April 

APRIL, month of Nymphs and Fauns and Cupids, 
Month of the Sungod's kisses. Earth's sweet passion. 
Of fanciful winds and showers; 
Apollo, glorious over hill and dale 
Ethereally striding; grasses springing 
Rapt to his feet, buds bursting, flowers out-breathing 
Their liberated hearts in love to him. 

[The little black-cap garrulous on the willow 
Perching so prim, the crested chaffinch warbling. 
And primrose and celandine, anemone and daisy. 
Starring the tender herb which lambs already nibble.] 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 361 

Month of all-gathering warmth, 

Of breathless moments, hotter and hotter growing — 

Smiles turned to fire, kisses to fierce earnest — 

Of sultry swoons, pauses, and strange suspense 

(Clouds and daemonic thunder through the blue vault 
threateningly rolling) ; 

Then the delirious up-break — the great fountains of the 
deep, in Sex, 

Loosened to pouring falling rushing waters; 

Shafts of wild light ; and Sky and Earth in one another's 
arms 

Melted, and all of Heaven spent in streams of love 

Towards the Loved one. 



Lucifer 

SEEST thou me pass — swift with my angels out of heaven 
propelled — 
All stars and lightning In a fluid train? 
Seest thou me pass, I say? 

His brows, the Lord's, In heaven are glorious; 
His eyes give light there, fashioning and beholding rapt 
all forms divine; 

His mighty loins are plunged in night and shadow. 
And I— 

I am the lightning of the generations through them, 
Seed of the worlds to be. 

He Is the Lord, In moment of creation, fixed everlasting, 
The Universe entire — or little flower starred in ecstasy; 
And I, orgasmic, fierce, His swift deliverance. 



362 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

[Seest thou me pass — all stars and lightning in a fluid 
train? 

From heaven down into chaos seest thou me pass, I say?] 



The Ocean of Sex 

TO hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean 
of Sex, within one, 
With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, 
the beloved genitals, 

Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the 
eyes of all human beings, 

Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures, 
How wonderful! 

Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor 
travels across it. 

As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond 
someone moves, then in the bowels of the water also there 
is a mirrored movement. 

So on the edge of this Ocean. 

The glory of the human form, even faintly outlined under 
the trees or by the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences; 

(Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly to be 
overpassed;) 

Till may-be to the touch, to the approach, to the incan- 
tation of the eyes of one. 

It burst forth, uncontrollable. 

O wonderful Ocean of Sex, 

Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 363 

forms contained (if they be truly contained) within each 
person, 

Mirror of the very universe, 

Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body. 

Ocean-river flowing ever on through the great trunk and 
branches of Humanity, 

From which after all the individual only springs like a 
leaf-bud ! 

Ocean which we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we 
do contain thee), and yet who containest us! 

Sometimes when I feel and know thee within, and identify 
myself with thee, 

Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of 
Heaven and Eternity. 

As THE Greeks Dreamed 

ON the loose hot sands at foot of the cliffs — 
The cloudless blue burning above in furious mid- 
day heats — 

As I bask, 

Bathing my brown-tanned body in the warm dry clean 
grit, or cooling it in the sea; 

And the sea creeps up, spacious, in curves along the shore, 

With fringes of tawny lacework, and green and blue, 
deepening into the loveliest violet. 

And Aphrodite herself out of this marvellously beautiful 
robe, this liquid cincture, swiftly gliding, for a moment 
stands, 

(Her feet on the watery plain, her head in the great 
height against the Sun,) 

Vast, glorious, white-armed, visible and invisible; 



364 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

As the sea stretches miles and miles, and the grey chalk 
cliffs and capes, fainter and fainter, run forward into it, 
looking on, 

And the fisherman slumbers in the shade of his boat, 
impervious. 

And fainter still and more slumbrous on the horizon, in 
haze and silence the far ships go by; 

Through it all, meseems, I see 

How the human body bathed in the sheen and wet, 
steeped in sun and air, 

Moving near and nude among the elements 

Matches somehow and interprets the whole of Nature; 

How from shoulder to foot of mountain and man alike 
the lines of grace run on ; 

How, as the Greeks dreamed, in rock and rill divinest 
human forms lie shrined, or in the wild woods lurk em- 
bosomed ; 

And how at length and only in the loving union and 
uncoveredness of Man with Nature may either know or un- 
derstand the other. 



In a Scotch-Fir Wood 

IN a Scotch-fir wood — 
Where the great rays of the low sun glanced through 
the trees, in open beauty under the shaggy green. 

Lighting stem behind stem in lofty strength interminable; 
And the wild sweet air ran lightly by, with warm scent of 
pine-needles — 

I heard a voice saying: 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 365 

O Man, when wilt thou come fit comrade o. such trees, 
fair mate and crown of such a scene ? 

Poor pigmy, botched in clothes, feet coffined in boots, 
braced, stitched and starched. 

Too feeble, alas! too mean, undignified, to be endured — 

Go hence, and in the centuries come again! 



The Dream Goes By 

THE dream goes by, touches men's hearts, and floats 
and fades again — 
Far on the hills away from this nightmare of modern 
cheap-jack life: 

The finished free Society, 

Finished and done with so much that clogs to-day the 
weary spirit, weary body; 

Finished and done with all the old cumbersome apparatus 
of Law and Authority, with the endless meanness of "busi- 
ness" and money-making, with the silly paraphernalia of 
distinction and respectability, with the terrible struggle of 
each against all, and the trampling of the weak underfoot 
by the strong; 

Done with the endless joyless labors for the bread that 
perisheth, for clothing which keeps not the heart warm, for 
possessions which only weigh their owners to the ground ; 

With envies, greeds, jealousies — loads and burdens of life 
too great to be borne — Sisyphus toils that bring no nearer 
to the goal. 



366 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The grown man hand in hand with his little girl, walking 
the woodland path, 

With brown uncovered bodies, both of them, so glad, 
content, unconscious; 

And all the wealth and beauty of the world is theirs; 

The Sun shining on their limbs; and in their minds the 
long results of human culture. 

The simple dresses of the public thoroughfare, used of 
not used with quiet sense of fitness; 

The simple diet so easily won, so gladly shared; 

The stores of human science, human knowledge, acces- 
sible to all — for all to use. 

And Death no longer terrible, but full 

Of poignant strange Expansion; Labor too 

(Which is our daily death 

And resurrection in the thing created) 

An ever-abiding joy — 

A life so near. to Nature, all at one with bird and plant 
and beast and swimming thing, 

So near to all its fellows in sweet love — 

In joy unbounded and undying love. 

The dream goes by, touches and stirs men's hearts, 
And floats, and waits, again. 



Surely the Time Will Come 

SURELY the time will come when humanity will refuse 
to be diseased any longer. 
This list of filthy and hideous complaints, — too filthy to 
be calmly spoken of — these small-poxes, typhoidsj choleras^ 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 367 

cancers, tumors, tubercles, — dropsy, diabetes, uraemia — all 
preventible, and easy enough to prevent; 

And yet — incredible though it seems — men and women 
still tolerating and condoning them ; 

Men and women who pride themselves on their culture, 
refinement, punctiliousness of nose, and so forth — and who 
would turn up the latter at the sight of a pig and a few 
fowls in an Irishman's cabin — actually tolerating in their 
own persons the perpetual presence of the most disgusting 
organisms ; 

And other men and women, through sheer ignorance, 
believing such a state of affairs to be necessary. 

Surely the time will come when to be diseased, to spread 
disease around one, or transmit it to descendants. 

To live willingly in the conditions that produce disease, 
or not strenuously to fight against such conditions. 

Will be looked on as a crime — both of the individual and 
of society. 

For since a little self-control, since a clean and elemen- 
tary diet, pure water, openness of the body to sun and air, 
a share of honest work, and some degree of mental peace 
and largesse, are the perfectly simple conditions of health, 
and are, or ought to be, accessible to everybody — 

To neglect these is sheer treason ; 

While to surrender them out of fear (should one stick to 
them) of being robbed of other things far less precious, is to 
be a fool, as well as a coward. 

Surely the time will come when people, seeing how 
obvious and simple is the problem of human life. 

Will refuse (even at the bidding of the Parson, the Police- 
man, Mrs. Grundy, and the commercial Slave-drivers and 
Tax-collectors) to live the lives of idiots; 



368 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Will refuse to do other work than that which they like, 
and which they feel to be really needed ; 

Win cease to believe that their own well-being can only 
be maintained at the cost of the Fear, Torment, and Slaugh- 
ter of the animals, and the Hanging and Imprisonment of 
men; 

And will waste the hours no more In elaborately preparing 
food which, when prepared, does but rot the vitals of those 
who consume it, and in schemes of money-making and 
'business' which but destroy their souls. 

The time will come surely when we shall cease to burden 
our limbs and becloud our skins with garments, the major 
part of which are useless, unless as a breeding ground of 
Ill-health, deformity, and Indecency; 

Shall cease to build walls and fortifications of property 
and possession each round ourselves as against the others 
— deliberately confining so and crucifying the great god of 
love within us — 

And shall at last liberate our minds and bodies from 
that funny old lazar-house of the centuries, of which none 
but ourselves, after all, are the warders and gaolers. 



The One Foundation 

ONLY that people can thrive that loves its land and 
swears to make It beautiful ; 
For the land (the Demos) is the foundation-element of 
human life, and if the public relation to that Is false, all else 
Is of need false and Inverted. 

How can a flower deny Its own roots, or a tree the soil 
from which It springs? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 369 

And how can a people stand firmly planted under the 
sun, except as mediators between Earth and Heaven — 

To dedicate the gracious fruits of the ground to all 
divine uses? 

Think of it — 

To grow rich and beautiful crops for human food, and 
flowers and fruits to rejoice the eye and heart, 

What a privilege! 

Yet this to-day is a burden and a degradation, thrust 
upon the poor and despised. 

The Scotch farm-lad strides across the ploughed leas, 
scattering with princely hand the bread of thousands; 

The Italian peasant ties his vines to the trellised canes 
with twigs of broom, and the spring sunlight glances and 
twinkles on him from the cistern just below; 

The Danish boy drives the herds home from the low- 
lying pasture-lands in the sweet clear air of evening; 

And the world which is built upon the labor of these 
disowns them, and they themselves sink earthward worn 
out with unheeded toil; 

While the Politician and the Merchant who flourish on 
lies and fill the people's ears and mouths with chaff are 
publicly seated in the highest places. 

And the Earth rolls on, with all her burden of love 
unheeded, 

And sadness falls on the peoples divorced from the breasts 
that fain would suckle them. 

Think of it — 

To place a nation squarely on its own base, spreading 



370 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

out its people far and wide In honored usefulness upon 
the soil, 

Building up all uses and capacities of the land Into the 
life of the masses, 

So that the riches of the Earth may go first and foremost 
to those who produce them, and so onward into the whole 
structure of society; 

To render the life of the people clean and gracious, vital 
from base to summit, and self-determining, 

Dependent simply on itself and, not on cliques and 
coteries of speculators anywhere; and springing thus inevi- 
tably up into wild free forms of love and fellowship ; 

To make the wild places of the lands sacred, keeping the 
streams pure, and planting fresh blooms along their edges; 
to preserve the air crystalline and without taint — tempting 
the sun to shine where before was gloom ; 

To adorn the woodlands and the high tops with new 
trees and shrubs and winged and footed things. 

Sparing all living creatures as far as possible rather than 
destroying them ; 

What a pleasure! 

To do all this In singleness of heart were indeed to open 
up riches for mankind of which few dream — 

So much, so infinitely more than what is now called 
Wealth. 

But to-day the lands are slimed and fenced over with 
denials ; and those who would cannot get to them, and those 
who own have no joy in them — except such joy as a dog may 
have in a fodderam. 

And so, even to-day, while riches untold are wrung from 
the Earth, it is rather as a robbery that they are produced — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 371 

without gladness or gratitude, but in grief and sadness and 
lying and greed and despair and unbelief. 

Say, say, what would those riches be, if the Earth and 
her love were free? 

But all waits. And the thunderclouds brood in silence 
over the lands, meditating the unlipped words of destiny; 
and the sky rains light upon the myriad leaves and grass, 
searching inevitably into every minutest thing; 

And Ignorance breeds Fear, and Fear breeds Greed, and 
Greed that Wealth whose converse is Poverty — and these 
again breed Strife and Fear in endless circles; 

But Experience (which in time to all must come) breeds 
Sympathy, and Sympathy Understanding, and Understand- 
ing Love; 

And Love leads Helpfulness by the hand, to open the 
gates of Power unlimited — even for that new race which 
now appears. 

And the blue sea waits below the girdle of the sun-fringed 
shores, and lips and laps through the millenniums, syllabling 
the unformed words which man alone can pronounce entire ; 

And the sunlight wraps the globe of the Earth, and 
dances and twinkles in the ether of the human heart, 

Which is indeed a great and boundless ocean, in which 
all things float suspended. 

A Mightier Than Mammon 

AT last, after centuries, when the tension and strain of 
the old society can go no further, and ruin on every 
side seems impending, 



372 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Behold! behind and beneath it all, in dim prefigurement, 
yet clear and not to be mistaken — the Outline and Draft of 
a new order. 

When Machinery has made affluence possible for every- 
body, and yet the scramble for Wealth is keener than ever, 
the line between rich and poor as sharp ; 

When locomotion and intercommunication practically 
make the whole World one, and yet the Nations stand round 
armed tooth and claw, and glaring at each other; 

When it is recognised that culture and manual labor are 
not only compatible but necessary in combination with each 
other, and yet society remains divided into brutalised 
workers and cultivated nincompoops; 

When men and women everywhere are hungering for 
community of life, to pass freely, to love and be loved; and 
yet they remain frozen up, starched, starved, coffined, each 
in their own little cells of propriety, respectability, dirty 
property, and dismal poverty; 

When the cells are alive and in pain, because the body 
is lifeless; 

When thousands of pulpits preach religion, and there is 
not a word of religion in it; 

When the great web and framework of the old order, 
Law, is collapsing with its own weight — myriads and 
myriads of statutes, overlapping, overlying, precedents, 
principles, instances, tumbled buried one behind another 
in inextricable confusion — and yet never before in the history 
of the world was there such a rigid brute-pharisaical appa- 
ratus of police, military and prisons to enforce the "heads or 
tails" of the Courts, and the cant of the "superior" classes; 

When the Millionaire appears on the scene — a new type 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 373 

of human being — as the Dinosaur may have appeared ages 
ago upon the Earth, gigantic, lumbering, fateful and danger- 
ous; yet destined perhaps finally to break down the ancient 
jungle of ''Government," and the barriers of the old Na- 
tionalities; and to be a link in the evolution of the future; 

When Art is divorced from Life, Science from human 
feeling. Marriage from Love, Education from Affection ; 

When to work freely at one's own chosen trade and to 
interchange freely the products with others is what almost 
everybody really desires — and is obviously the indicated social 
form of the future ; and yet when nearly everyone is a wage- 
slave or works at work which he detests ! 

When the longing for the life of Nature, for the Air and 
the Sun, for the freedom of the Earth and the waters, for 
liberation, wildness, spontaneity, is upon folk as perhaps it 
never was before ; and yet they are mewed up more than 
ever in houses, clothes, "business," and general asphyxia and 
futility. 

When similarly the longing for freedom of Sex is upon 
people, for purity of love, unashamed, unshackled, creating 
its own law — and yet love is everywhere shamed and 
shackled and impure; 

When the Electric Tension in every direction, owing to 
this separation of polarities, is becoming so great that the 
luminous spark, the lightning, the vital flash, has become 
inevitable ; 

Then at last, not to be mistaken, the outline and draft of 
the new creature appears — 

The soul that soon shall knit the growing limbs glides In. 

A new conception of Life — yet ancient as creation (since 
indeed, properly speaking, there is no other) — 



374 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The life of the Heart, the life of friendship and attach- 
ment: 

Society forming freely everywhere round this — knit to- 
gether by this, rather than by the old Cash-nexus: 

The love and pride of race, of clan, of family, the free 
sacrifice of life for these, the commemoration of these in 
grand works and deeds; 

The dedication of Humanity, the wider embrace that 
passes all barriers of class and race; 

And the innumerable personal affection in all its forms — 

These, and a proud beautiful sane utterance and enduring 
expression of them, first; and the other things to follow. 

The love of men for each other — so tender, heroic, 
constant ; 

That has come all down the ages, in every clime, in every 
nation. 

Always so true, so well assured of itself, overleaping 
barriers of age, of rank, of distance, 

Flag of the camp of Freedom; 

The love of women for each other — so rapt. Intense, so 
confiding-close, so burning-passionate. 

To unheard deeds of sacrifice, of daring and devotion, 
prompting ; 

And (not less) the love of men for women, and of women 
for men — on a newer greater scale than it has hitherto been 
conceived ; 

Grand, free and equal — gracious yet ever incommen- 
surable — 

The soul of Comradeship glides in. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 375 

The young heir goes to inspect the works of one of his 
tenants ; 

[Once more the king's son loves the shepherd lad ;] 

In the shed the fireman is shovelling coal into the boiler 
furnace. He is neither specially handsome nor specially 
intelligent, yet when he turns, from under his dark lids 
rimmed with coal-dust shoots something so human, so loving- 
near, it makes the other tremble. 

They only speak a few words, and lo! underneath all the 
differences of class and speech, of muscle and manhood, their 
souls are knit together. 

The Cinghalese coolie comes on board a merchant vessel 
at Colombo, every day for a week or more, to do some bits 
of cleaning. 

He is a sweet-natured bright intelligent fellow of 21 or 
so. One of the engineers is decently kind and friendly with 
him — gives him a knife and one or two little presents ; 

But the Cinghalese gives his very soul to the engineer; 
and worships his white jacket and overalls as though they 
were the shining garment of. a god. 

He cannot rest; but implores to be taken on the voyage; 
and weeps bitterly when he learns that the ship must sail 
without him. 

[Ah! weep not, brown-bodied youth wandering lonely by 
the surf-ridden shore — as you watch your white friend's ves- 
sel gliding into the offing, under the sun and the sun- 
fringed clouds; 

Out, far out to sea, with your friend whom you will never 
see again; 

Weep not so heart-brokenly, for even your tears, gentle 



376 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

boy, poured now upon the barren sand are the prophecy of 
amity that shall be one day between all the races of the 
earth.] 

And here are two women, both doctors and mature In 
their profession, whose souls are knit in a curiously deep 
affection. 

They share a practice in a large town, and live in the 
same house together, exchanging all that they command, of 
life and affection and experience; 

And this continues for twenty years — till the death of 
the elder one — after which the other ceases not to visit 
her grave, twice every week, till the time of her own last 
illness. 

And this is of a poor lad born in the slums, who with 
aching lonely heart once walked the streets of London. 

Many spoke to him because he was fair — asked him to 
come and have a drink, and so forth ; but still it was no 
satisfaction to him; for they did not give him that which 
he needed. 

Then one day he saw a face in which love dwelt. It 
was a man twice his own age, captain of a sailing vessel — 
a large free man, well acquainted with the world, capable 
and kindly. 

And the moment the lad saw him his heart was given 
to him, and he could not rest but must needs follow the 
man up and down — yet daring not to speak to him, and the 
other knowing nothing of it all. 

And this continued — till the time came for the man to 
go another voyage. Then he disappeared ; and the youth, 
still not knowing who or whence he was, fell into worse 
misery and loneliness than ever, for a whole year. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 377 

Till at last one day — or one evening rather — to his great 
joy he saw his friend going into a public house. It was in a 
little street off Mile-end Road. He slipped in and sat 
beside him. 

And the man spoke to him, and was kind, but nothing 
more. And presently, as the hour was getting late, got up 
and said Goodnight, and went out at the door. 

And the lad, suddenly seized with a panic fear that he 
might never see his friend again, hurried after him, and 
when they came to a quiet spot, ran up and seized him by the 
hand, and hardly knowing what he was doing fell on his 
knees on the pavement, and held him. 

And the man at first thought this was a ruse or a mere 
conspiracy, but when he lifted the lad and looked in his 
face he understood, for he saw love written there. And he 
straightway loved and received him. 

And this is of a boy who sat in school. 

The masters talked about Greek accidence and quadratic 
equations, and the boys talked about lobs and byes and bases 
and goals; but of that which was nearest to his heart no 
one said a word. 

It was laughed at — or left unspoken. 

Yet when the boy stood near some of his comrades in 
the cricket-field or sat next them in school, he stocked and 
stammered, because of some winged glorious thing which 
stood or sat between him and them. 

And again the laughter came, because he had forgotten 
what he was doing; and he shrank into himself, and the walls 
round him grew, so that he was pent and lonely like a 
prisoner. 

Till one day to him weeping. Love full-grown, all- 



378 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

glorious, pure, unashamed, unshackled, came like a god into 
his little cell, and swore to break the barriers. 

And when the boy through his tears asked him how he 
would do that, Love answered not, but turning drew with 
his finger on the walls of the cell. 

And as he drew, lo! beneath his finger sprang all forms 
of beauty, an endless host — outlines and colors of all that 
is, transfigured; 

And, as he drew, the cell-walls widened — a new world 
rose — and folk came trooping in to gaze, 

And the barriers had vanished. 

Wonderful, beautiful, the Soul that knits the Body's life 
passed in, 

And the barriers had vanished. 

Everywhere under the surface the streamers shoot, 
auroral. 

Strands and tissues of a new life forming. 

Already the monstrous accumulations of private wealth 
seem useless and a burden — 

At best to be absorbed in new formations. 

The young woman from an upper class of society builds 
up her girls* club; the young man organises his boys from 
the slums. Untiring is their care; but something more, 
more personal and close, than philanthropy inspires them. 

The little guilds of workers are animated by a new spirit ; 
to have pleasure in good work seems something worth living 
for ; the home-colonists turn their backs on civilisation if only 
they may realise a friendly life with Nature and each other; 
the girls in the dress-making shop stand in a new relation to 
their mistress, and work so gladly for her and with her ; the 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 379 

employer of labor begins to doubt whether he gets any satis- 
faction by grinding the faces of his men — a new idea is 
germinating in his mind ; even to the landlord it occurs that 
to create a glad and free village life upon his estate would 
be more pleasure than to shoot over it. 

As to the millionaire, having spent his life in scheming 
for Wealth, he cannot but continue in the web which him- 
self has woven ; yet is heartily sick of it, and longs In a 
kind of vague way for something simple and unembarrassed. 
He is pestered to death by sharks, parasites, poor relations, 
politicians, adventurers, lawyers, company-promoters, beg- 
ging letters and business correspondence, society functions, 
charitable and philanthropic schemes, town and country 
houses, stewards, bailiffs, flunkeys, and the care of endless 
possessions; and sees that to cast all these aside and devote 
his wealth if possible to the realisation of a grand life iot 
the mass-peoples of the Earth were indeed his best hope 
and happiness. 

The graduate from Cambridge is a warm-hearted Impul- 
sive little woman, genuine and human to the core. Having 
escaped from high and dry home-circles, she found curiously 
the answer of her heart in a wage-worker of an East London 
workshop — a calm broad-browed woman, strong, clear- 
headed, somewhat sad in expression, and a bit of a leader 
among her trade-mates. 

Having got into touch with each other, the two came at 
last to live together; and immediately on doing so found 
themselves a focus and centre of activities — like opposite 
poles of a battery through which when in contact the elec- 
tricity streams. 

So the news and Interests of the two classes of society 
Streamed through them. Through them too, folk from 



38o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

either side, especially women, came Into touch with each 
other, and discovered a common cause and sympathy amid 
many surface differences. 

Thus by a thousand needs beside their own compelled, 
was their love assured, their little home made sacred. 

Everywhere a new motive of life dawns. 

With the liberation of Love, and with it of Sex, with the 
sense that these are things — and the joy of them — not to be 
dreaded or barred, but to be made use of, wisely and freely, 
as a man makes use of his most honored possession. 

Comes a new gladness : 

The liberation of a Motive greater than Money, 

And the only motive perhaps that can finally take pre- 
cedence of Money. 

Men and women mate freely again; 

The sacredness of sex In freedom Is taught In schools and 
churches; the ulcer of prostitution slowly disappears; the 
wasted love that flows In a morbid stream through the 
streets, or desiccates in grand mansions, runs once more 
Into the channels of free devotion and life. 

One by one, here and there, in silence perhaps, unre- 
marked, or perhaps the centre of a little cyclone of excited 
abuse, a couple, offstanding, exempt, determined, assert their 
right to the highest and best that life can give. 

[Fear not, gentle girl, the sneers of the womenkind, nor 
thou, young man, the pointed fingers of who can credit not 
the truth of love.] 

To lead their own lives, Irrespective of all criticism and 
custom, and graft into the great Heart of the world and each 
other. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 381 

Wild as a raven, and a free lover of Nature, is the Irish 
squire's daughter. She hates all the conventions and pro- 
prieties vi^ith an instinctive hatred — she hardly knows why. 
She is loved by a man whom the family consider beneath 
them. He is not without his faults certainly. But when 
her parents turn fiercely on her and him, she determines at 
all costs to stick to him. Her sister, the dove, approved 
and admired by everybody, marries a young Exrl just come 
into the title; and she on the same day goes off with her 
friend, and is forbidden to cross, and in fact never crosses, 
the threshold of her home again. 

The newly-made wife, wedded to an army officer, finds 
almost immediately after marriage that their temperaments 
are wholly incompatible. Instead of sacrificing herself to 
"duty" or propriety, she has the good sense to insist on 
leaving him: on leaving him his freedom, and herself the 
same, as far as may be, for the future. 

And this is of a young man, a man about town and the 
clubs, and well up in the finesse of society, but of real 
affectionate nature — who was truly bored with his own pur- 
suits and surroundings, and so for him too the barriers 
vanished. 

He fell in with a girl of quite rustic birth and life, but 
bright-looking, and of sturdy almost stubborn common-sense 
and wit; and was charmed — partly by her contrast to all 
that he was accustomed to. 

Ultimately — and after some obstinate and exasperating 
refusals on her part — he made her his wife; much to the 
disgust of his relatives — whose only consolation was to find 
he did not intend to bring her among them! 

She in fact felt (and he knew) that she could not cope 



382 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

with 'society' ways and customs, and her true instinct was 
to spare herself the vulgarity. 

They took a little house near London, and lived quietly 
and happily, allowing any of their friends, who had good 
sense enough, to come and see them — she meanwhile learn- 
ing much about the great world, and he learning much 
which he had never known before about practical work and 
the needs of the people. 

Then, later on, when he came into his estate, and they 
went down into the country, instead of living in the ances- 
tral wigwam they agreed it better to build a decent-sized 
cottage in the grounds for their own use; 

And the Hall and outbuildings they fitted up as Work- 
shops; and gradually getting the village lads and girls to- 
gether found them employment at various small trades and 
crafts 

Till with the output of good and artistic work, their 
market became assured, and the affair grew rapidly in ex- 
tent and solidity. 

And the larger rooms they adorned in every way for 
library and reading purposes, and music and entertainments 
of all kinds ; and the grounds were partly for recreation 
and partly for the cultivation of produce; 

So that before long the place became much known and 
sought after, and the employees (who all had a share in the 
concern) were mighty proud of it. 

Certainly the old county society felt somewhat shocked 
and uncomfortable, and even the tenant-farmers thought 
things were being carried too far; 

But the young couple stuck to their programme, and as 
years went on, and after various obstacles and opposition 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 383 

lived down, their lives became the centre of the love and 
affection of the whole neighborhood, great and small, but 
especially the small ; 

And they achieved a real distinction, and the finest kind 
of aristocracy. 



O little sister Heart, without thy big brother the rude 
Brain what wouldst thou dof 

So I see thee sitting in thy solitary chamber, poring over a 
figure in a cameo — 

So yearning lost desirous, faint forgetful. 

Failing almost thy daily service of the body. 

Then comes thy brother and snatches thee by the hand. 
saying, "Come out here into the world: 

See all these wonderful things, and all there is to do" ; 

And talks so eloquent, so persuasively. 

Soon thou art busy with him and his affairs, and the great 
world outside there in the sun; 

Till presently he rests or sleeps awhile — and thou return- 
ing 

Gazest again on the cameo in thy chamber^ 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 385 



Forms Eternal as the Mountains 

SO, when for an instant my friends (and I myself) 
appeared like insubstantial forms whirled to and fro 
in the world, now jostled against each other, now carried 
apart — the sport of the winds and the waves, and puppets 
moved by the tangled threads of chance: 

All at once the heavens opened, and I beheld, magnifi- 
cent, serene — 

Like mountains in the morning towering over the earth, 
changeless, or changing only as the mountains change, 

[And Time and all the years were but a mist which 
rolled against them, 

Hiding, revealing, here an outline, there an outline, 

Here a ledge of blooming flowers, there a black and 
lowering crag] — 

That other world where the Sun shines for ever, 

Those other Forms that move not from their place. 



Spending the Night Alone 

TO lie all night beside the loved one — how lovely! 
To hold in one's arms something so precious, so 
beautiful. 

Dear head and hair and lips and limbs that shrine eternity, 
Through scent and sense and breath and touch and love — 
Forgetting all but this one — all but this one. 
And then again to spend the night alone, to resume 
oneself — 



386 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

To sail out in the silent watches over the sleeping world, 
and drink of the intoxication of space, 

Calm, self-centred, to the great first One united; 

Over-looking the wide sleeping-grounds of Time — forms 
of the past, the future — comrades innumerable. 

Lovers possible, all safely eternally embosomed ; 

Kissing them lightly on the lips, the forehead, 

Leaving them sleeping, 

Spending the night alone. 



o 



O Joy Divine of Friends 

JOY divine of friends! 
To hold within the circle of one's arms 
More than the universe holds: 
So sweet, so rare, so precious beyond words, 
The god so tenderly mortal! 

Not kisses only or embraces, 

Nor the sweet pain and passion of the flesh alone: 

But more, far more. 

To feel (ah joy!) the creature deep within 

Touch on its mate, unite, and lie entranced 

There, ages down, and ages long, in light. 

Suffused, divine — where all these other pleasures 

Fade but to symbols of that perfect union! 



o 



O Child of Uranus 

CHILD of Uranus, wanderer down all times, 
Darkling, from farthest ages of the Earth the same 
Strange tender figure, full of grace and pity, 
Yet outcast and misunderstood of men — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 387 

Thy Woman-soul within a Man's form dwelling, 

[Was Adam perchance like this, ere Eve from his side 
was drawn?] 

So gentle, gracious, dignified, complete. 

With man's strength to perform, and pride to suffer with- 
out sign. 

And feminine sensitiveness to the last fibre of being; 

Strange twice-born, having entrance to both worlds — 

Loved, loved by either sex, 

And free of all their lore! 

I see thee where down all of Time thou comest; 
And women break their alabaster caskets, kiss and anoint 
thy feet, and bless the womb that bare thee, 
While in thy bosom with thee, lip to lip, 
Thy younger comrade lies. 

Lord of the love which rules this changing world. 
Passing all partial loves, this one complete — the Mother- 
love and sex-emotion blended — 

I see thee where for centuries thou hast walked. 

Lonely, the world of men. 

Saving, redeeming, drawing all to thee. 

Yet outcast, slandered, pointed of the mob, 

Misjudged and crucified. 

Dear Son of heaven — long suffering wanderer through 
the wildernesses of civilisation — 

The day draws nigh when from these mists of ages 
Thy form in glory clad shall reappear. 



388 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



One at a Time 

A MILLION faces, loves, bodies, lives — a million souls, 
Pouring down Time — 
As in a dream I see, and know my own. 
All nations, classes, trades, ranks, temperaments, 
[The soldier's cap, the felon's crop, the bishop's mitre, 
Under the eyelids of the peasant woman, beneath the 

burnous of the Arab chieftain,] 

A million souls, yet from the rest at once distinguished — 

by the first glance revealed — 
I see, and know my own. 

[Nay through the ages, loved ones, true to you, 

Inseparable at heart I still remain. 

Nor doubt you for an instant, nor myself.] 

But here, to-day, may-be of all One only 

The hour, the strict Eternity of Time, 

Presents — and I accept. 

May-be the least, unworthiest as the world would say, 

Yet even so sufficient — for blest the hour 

Which brings w^hat, else, Eternity would miss! 

Another day the worthiest may claim me; 

To-day we two alone will be the world: 

And Love, the Lord of all, shall dwell between us. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 389 

The Dead Comrade 

THERE among the woods, after the battle returning, 
In a little open spot — how well I remember It — 

Where the ground was red with the blood of my lover, 
my dead comrade, 

[Him whom to save I would have; died so gladly, O so 
gladly. 

Whom I could not at any time bear to see suffer even 
a little hurt, 

So tenderly we loved, so tenderly,] 

There on the stained red ground, In the midst of the 
clotted precious blood, not even yet dry, stood a small yellow 
flower — 

The little Cow-wheat they call It, with Its slender yellow 
blossoms In pairs, and Its faint-tinged lips. 

And now in the woods each year — In the silent beautiful 
woods, so calm, so sweet — though the same flowers spring by 
hundreds — 

Not a word do they utter of that awful scene, not a word 
of all that carnage. 

Of the splintered trees, the blood-smeared corpses, the 
devilish noises and the sights and smells. 

Or of the livid face and faint-blue lips of him I loved as 
never another I could love. 

O how can you grow so careless, little flowers, and yet 
continue ages to grow under the trees the same — 
And all the light gone out of the world for me? 
Each year when summer comes and July suns, 



390 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

To the woods I must go like one drawn by a fatal dread 
and fascination, 

To see the sight I most abhor to see — 

The patch of blood, and the unharmed flower in the midst, 

And faint in death the lips I love so well. 

Philolaus to Diocles 

HOW often at dusk, dear friend, when thou art absent, 
Sitting alone I wonder of what thou doest, 
And dream, and wait of thee. 

All the sweet noons and moons we have spent together; 

All the glad interchange of laughter and love. 

And thoughts, so grave, or fanciful: 

What can compare with these, or what surpass them? 

All the unbroken faith and steadfast reliance — nigh 
twenty years twining the roots of life far down; 

And not a mistrustful hour between us — or moment of 
anger: 

What can surpass all this, or what compare? 

Could riches or fame? 

Or if the Thebans honor me for their law-giver, 

Or thou, Diocles, in Olympic fields art victor beloved 
and crowned. 

What are these things to that? 

And still thou growest upon me, as a mountain. 
Seen from another mountain-summit, rises 
Clearer, more grand, more beautiful than ever; 
And still within thine eyes, and ever plainer, 
I see my own soul sleeping. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 391 

Say, did not Love, the Olympian blacksmith, find us, 

/Eons ago, in heaven, 

And weld our souls together before all worlds? 



II 



When thou art far, and the days go by without thee, 

Strangely I suffer. 

Perhaps even so in winter suffer the plants and the 
trees, when the Sun withdraws his life-ray; 

Thin runs the blood in my limbs, sucked out of the 
arteries ; 

The heart shrinks closed and painful — I lose command 
and vigor; 

At times like these, methinks, I too have strayed from 
my body, 

Afar, in pursuit of thee, my sun and my savior. 



Ill 



Thou art so beautiful to me, sweet friend. 

Years bring no shadow between us; 

Always I praise the very ground beneath thy feet, 

That leads thee toward me. 

And give my unbelieving hands free leave to hold thee, 

For still to assure myself that thou art there 

Is my first need. 

Love, that entwined our souls before all worlds. 
Binds the great orbs of heaven too in their courses. 
But by no bond more lasting. 



392 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

IV 

And sweeter far to suffer is It, dear one, being some- 
times absent, 

Than (if indeed 'twere possible) to feel the opposite pain 
Of too much nearness, and love dying so 
Down to mere slackness. 

Now, as it is, the harp is firmly strung; 
A tender tension animates the strings; 
And every thought of Thee, and all the winds which 
blow along the world. 

Wake a sweet accord underneath the din, 
And harmonize life's wilderness for me. 



Therefore I say, stay, comrade, lover mine, 
Nor wander far from me while life remains, 
But let us rather, and if it may be, hand in hand, 
Pass to that last strange change, therein perhaps to know 
each other 

Nearer even than now. 

VI 

Indeed, thou art so deep within my heart, 
I fear not Death. And though I die, and fail, 
Falling through stupors, senselessness, oblivion, 
Down to the roots of being; still, thou art there. 
I shall but sleep as I have slept before, 
So oft, in dreamless peace, close-linked with thee. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 393 



Hafiz to the Cup-Bearer 

DEAR Son, that out of the crowded footways of Shiraz, 
With hesitant step emerging, 
Camest and laid thy life down at my feet, 
Faint and ashamed, like one by some divine wine van- 
quished : 

I take thy gift, so gracious and sparkling-clear. 
Thy naive offering, as of a simple Nature-child, 
Wondering, like one who sees a rose in winter blooming, 
or cypress 'mid a wilderness of rocks; 

Or finds among the marl and clay beneath his feet 
A ruby fair embedded — and stops and takes it. 

[The Earth, so dead and gross, and yet to points of 
finest light 

Still working in the silence of her unseen chambers! 

And thou, great common People, slavish still and brute 
and ignorant, in alley and tavern. 

Yet in thy rugged mass fair hearts of finest glow 

Infallibly condensing!] 

Come, son (since thou hast said it), out of all Shiraz 
Hafiz salutes thee comrade. Let us go 
A spell of life along the road together. 



394 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



In the Stone-floored Workshop 

THERE In the stone-floored workshop In the middle 
of a great dirty city — the windows half made up with 
dust — 

Three men, astraddle on their horsings, and over their 
grinding wheels bending. 

The drum that brings the power from the engine-room 
pounds and thumps, the belting slaps and crackles, whizz 
go the wheels so steady in their sockets, and the streams 
of sparks fly rustling. 

All Is so old-fashioned, perhaps much as it was four or 
five centuries ago; 

The old stone trows, half full of water. In which the 
wheels run; the puddles, the mud, the wheelswarf spat- 
tered and crusting the walls and even the clothes of the 
grinders with yellow dirt; 

The rude wooden bearings for the axles, soused with 
water when they get too hot; the drawing-up stones, emery 
wheels, polishers, glazers; 

The little wheels, made out of fragments of larger ones, 
for hollow grinding, and (more modern) the fan for draw- 
ing and expelling the dust. 

There astraddle. In their rough clothes, with clogs on 
their feet, and faces yellow-splashed, hour by hour bending 
over, the men sit — 

With careful grasp of one hand and pressure of the other, 
holding the blades to the stone — the pads of their finger-tips 
worn through to the very quick where they now and then 
and unavoidably touch it in Its swift career. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 395 

Very careful and responsible is the work — the least slip 
may cause an accident. 

A man comes in from the hardening shop, puts down a 
bundle of rough-shaped blades, and goes out again. 

And still the heads sway rhythmically from side to side 
as eye and hand follow their work across the wheel. 

Very careful is the testing and examining of a new stone 
and the fitting it on its axle: a single flaw and in the great 
speed it will fly, bringing danger to all around it. 

Now and then one pauses and takes a swipe out of a can ; 
or throws his band off, to change his wheel for another; or 
goes to the fire to examine some blades which are heating in 
a tray over it. 

Curt is the talk (of fancy-backs, rattlers, sours and 
wasters, tangs and heels and shoulders), for the noise is too 
great, and the strain, for much beyond monosyllables. 

Dingy the den and dense the grit that settles thick upon 
everything. 

Yet at lastAout of it all, out of this primitive scene, 
emerges something so finished, so subtly perfect — 

A razor, keen and brilliant, a very focus of light in the 
whole shop, with swift invisible edge running true from 
heel to point, and ringing so clear to the twang of the 
thumb-nail on it — 

Emerges (his work done) a figure with dusty cap and 
light curls escaping from under it, large dove-grey eyes and 
Dutch-featured face of tears and laughter, 

(So subtle, so rare, so finished a product,) 

A man who understands and accepts all human life and 
character, 



396 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Keen and swift of brain, heart tender and true, and low 
voice ringing so clear, 
And my dear comrade. 



The Trysting 

FAR over the hills, ten miles, in the cloudless summer 
morning, 
By grassy slopes and flowering wheatfields, and over the 
brooks, he strides — 

A young man, slender, wistful-eyed — with a great bouquet 
of flowers in his hand. 

Great roses, red and white (in the cottage-home garden 
gathered). 

And sweet-scented ladslove and rich marigolds and mig- 
nonette and lilies. 

All trembling in the glimmer of brimming eyes, and 
steeped in fragrant memories. 

With full full heart he carries. 

And calls in spirit, the while he goes, to her so loved — 

More than all other women on earth beloved — 

His mother who bore him. 

Till at length by the town arriving. 

On her grave in the cemetery ground he faithfully lays 
them. 

And this the trysting. 

This the trysting for which in the little garden, with tears, 
he gathered the flowers, 

For which o'er the hills he hastened. — 
And this, what means, what boots it? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 397 

There truly, below, with head fallen on one side, a 
shapeless indistinguishable mass, her body lies — 

Three years already from this life departed — 

Nor hears nor sees, nor understands at all, 

Senseless as any clod. 

Above, the flowers he has brought lie wilting in the sun ; 

Around, the common-place dingy scene extends — the 
dreary cemetery, 

The stones, the walls, the houses. — 

What boots it all? 

These senseless things that neither see nor hear, 

To senseless things what message can they bear? 

Yet he, he hears and sees. 

A natural child, untaught, reckless of custom and what 
they call religion, 

He hears and sees things hidden from the learned; 

He glimpses forms beyond the walls of Time. 

Of bibles, creeds and churches he knows nothing. 

And all that science has said about life and death and 
atom-dances and the immutable laws of matter, 

And all the impassable lines and barriers that the pro- 
fessors and specialists have built up out of their own 
imaginations — 

These simply exist not, for him. 

He only knows she comes, the loved and worshiped — 

Comes, takes the flowers, 

Stands like a thin mist in the sun beside him, 

Looks in his eyes, and touches him again. 

And to Its depth his heart shakes, breaking backward, 
Tears rise once more, earth reels, the sun is splintered, 



398 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Stones, houses, and the solid sky dissolve, 
And that far marvelous vibration of the soul. 
Swifter than light, more powerful than sound. 
Flies through the world, pierces the rocks and tombs, 
And gains her Presence at the feet of God. 



The Lover Far on the Hills 

HERE on this high top far above the world — 
This mute and glorious scene, earth's panorama 
[The swelling mountains, all in green and gold, 
Round-topped, or broken into savage crags; 
The valleys scarcely shown, like narrow rifts; 
The slate-dark shadows, and the tarns and lakes, 
And vistas over them to sunny lands 
Of tiny patchwork, with quaint fields and farms, 
White sails on waters, and the sun-splashed sea:] 
Here on this high top dreaming, to it all 
I find but one fit likeness — 
Namely the gracious form of her I love. 
The limbs and hair, the lips, the eyes, I love — 
Twin heavenlit lakes — 

And undulant lines that run from hips to shoulder; 
Fair world of hollow and rondure, hill and plain, — 
So solid-fair like this, so dewy-fragrant. 
And all inwrought with that dear life that holds me. 

How calm this air! this silence here in heaven 
Calm blue, and tender hanging clouds delaying 
To kiss their shadows on the hills' deep breasts; 
And far around this dream of human presence — 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 399 

Nature, and my sweet Helpmate whom I worship, 
With the dear god that dwells behind them both. 



T 



The Babe 

HE trio perfect: the man, the woman, and the babe. 
And herein all Creation. 



The two, with wonder in their eyes, from opposite worlds 
Of sex, of ancestry, pursuits, traditions, 
Each other suddenly, amazed, confronting — 
A nameless glory each in each surmising. 

A frenzy as of Gods — 

Imperial rage, flinging the goods of the world aside as 
dross, to reach to a priceless treasure: 
[He madly invasive. 

She deeply wise, and drawing farther back 
Even to the gates of Paradise as he approaches:] 
Strange ecstasy of warfare! 
Seisin and ravishment of souls and bodies, 
Veils rent asunder. 

Heaven opening measureless, overhead, in splendor, 
And all life changed, transfigured! 

And then a calm. 

Weeks of humdrum and mortal commonplace, 

And months perchance in monotone of toil. 

But still behind it all some deep remembrance, 

Some sure reliance, 

And sweet and secret knowledge in each other. 



40O TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And then the Babe: 

A tiny perfect sea-shell on the shore 

By the waves gently laid (the awful waves!) — 

By trembling hands received — a folded message — 

A babe yet slumbering, with a ripple on its face 

Remindful of the ocean. 

And two twined forms that overbend it, smiling, 
And wonder to what land Love must have journeyed, 
Who brought this back — this word of sweetest meaning, 
Two lives made one, and visible as one. 

And herein all Creation. 



O gracious Mother, in thy vast eternal sunlight 
Heal us, thy foolish children, from our sin; 
Who heed thee not, but careless of thy Presence 
Turn our bent backs on thee, and scratch and scrabble 
In ash-heaps for salvation. 



402 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



I Saw a Fair House 

T SAW a fair house standing In a garden, but no one 
-■- moved about It; 

And I said to some who stood by, Who Is the owner or 
dweller here? 

And they said, We know not. Sometimes we see a form 
at a window, but it is for a moment only, and then it is 
gone. 

Then I went up to the door of the house, and turned 
the handle very softly, and went In. 

And the house was like a place deserted, yet was there 
a kind of order as If It might be used; and the tables were 
laid with victuals, and there was no lack of necessaries or 
of comforts; 

And servants passed along the corridors ; so I asked one 
of them, Where Is the mistress of your house? 

And he said, I know not. 

Then I went on again, and passed softly through many 
rooms, and peeped Into others; 

And at last In a far chamber I came upon the figure of 
a woman, alone, and seated on a chair, with her head on 
her knees, and buried in her hands; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 403 

And I said, Are you the mistress of this house? 

And when she lifted her face I saw it was very beautiful, 
and her eyes were glorious as the eyes of Love himself, but 
they were stained with weeping. 

And she said, This is not my house, it is my prison. 

And I said. Are not these servants here to minister to 
you? 

She answered, Yes — but what is that if they are only here 
to minister to me? 

But these rooms, I said, and well-set tables? 

Yes — but what is that if they are only swept and gar- 
nished for me? 

And this garden, and the fair outlook from it? 

Yes — but since I may not even go my own errands be- 
yond the gate? 

And I said, How is that? 

And she answered. Indeed I long to go down Into the 
world, but I may not ; no sooner do I show the face of Love 
than I am execrated as one forbidden and an outcast. For 
in this city so long as one remains within one's house one 
may do there what meanness and selfishness one will, pro- 
vided one keeps fair the front of the house ; but to go forth 
openly and share one's life and the gladness of life with 
others, that is not permitted. , 

And I said, It is a strange city. 

And I went out and walked through the streets; but 
gloom and sadness reigned, and only in some houses the noise 
of feasting and debauchery, and in others a sound of weeping. 



404 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



A Dream of Human Life 

I DREAMED that I saw a wild and lonely promontory 
on which the sea beat; and the waves dashed against 
rocky cliffs and bastions, and flew in spray over the edges of 
them, and clouds drifted on overhead, mingling with the sea- 
mist below in one veil which wrapped and shadowed all, 
save where now and then a watery beam from the sun 
glanced through. 

And in the midst among the rocks and crags was (it 
seemed to me) an ancient ancient fane, like some far for- 
gotten Abbey Church built in an elder world — nor was it 
easy to say whether it was indeed built up of ordinary 
masonry, or whether by some rude art it had been shapen 
from the very crags themselves. But round about it and 
over the promontory on all sides the rocks and cliffs were 
carven in strange forms — sea-monsters half submerged be- 
neath the waves, and serpents stretching along the bases 
of the cliffs, and evil shapes thrown up on land and grasp- 
ing at the rocks with iron claws; and beside them forms 
heroic of men and women on ledges here and there and 
pinnacles, through the mist half-shown — as it might have 
been S. George against the dragon, or Andromeda to the 
rock-face chained, or Perseus with the Gorgon's head in 
hand. 

But who they really were I could not well see. Only 
ever as the spray and wind wreathed by, the figures as in 
mortal combat seemed to move and menace each other, and 
serpents writhed and sea-beasts plunged through waves. 
And from the ancient fane came the sound of music con- 
tinually — now low and distant, now rising with the storm 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 405 

and mingling with the ocean-roar and wild cry of the wind: 
while overhead amid the breaking lights was a fluttering as 
of Wings. 

And presently a change came over my dream; and look- 
ing again I saw that the storm had ceased, and the promon- 
tory was lying there in the sunshine, calm and peaceful; 
and the rocks were black no more, but full of color and 
glory; and the hero figures were in their places, at rest and 
beautiful to look on; and even the monsters that had 
seemed so terrible had a grace of their own, transformed 
in the peaceful light to harmless grotesque things. And 
the whole land seemed to thrill with a subterranean music, 
and on a high crag brooding over all was a figure with arms 
outstretched. 

And once more my dream changed ; and I looked, and 
the rocks had become like ordinary rocks and sea-cliffs, and 
grasses and wild flowers grew, and little habitations nestled, 
in the hollows of them ; and the sea crawled about the 
boulders lying below them ; and the promontory ran out 
into the ocean, and ships went past it to all parts of the 
world. 

The Coast of Liguria 

A THOUSAND years are nothing. 
Once the Ligurian, sturdy and thickset, scaled these 
rocks. 

And built his beehive huts of unhewn stone on the lime- 
stone terraces, 

And gathered snails for food, and fought his tribal battles. 



4o6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Now the Greek wanders along the shore, and oleander 
and rosemary 

Shine in the moon for him, or Daphne hides 

Among the laurel groves, or Heracles 

Drives his red cattle home along the coastline. 

Later, the Roman makes great roads, and marches col- 
umns of soldiers through the dust. 

Where overhead some temple of Castor and Pollux on 
the height 

Gives omen of good fortune. The Christian follows, 

Peacefully toiling in his olive-garden. 

Hymning the gentle god, 

And turns the Temple to a shrine of Michael — rechris- 
tens Mars, St. Martin. 

But presently the Moor with fire and rapine sweeps the 
coast. 

Or in his mountain-fastness, for a moment resting, 
watches the shining scimitar of the sea 

Sheathed in the bay, its scabbard. Then, in their turn. 

Bishops and Barons rule the land, and rage against each 
other. In the end the Modern 

Buries it all in a big Hotel's foundations 

Or the embankment of a Railroad. 

Yet still beneath the surface all is alive. 

Still the old peasant-woman — grin-faced, big-mouthed, 
with big-palmed hands, short fingers, and bandy climbing 
legs — among the rocks 

Goes foraging for snails. The people still 

Dimly athwart the mists of time remember, 

Of Heracles the Savior, 

How on this Plain, that Promontory, he rested 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 407 

From his great labors in the West returning. 

Still the little Church of St. Michael on the rock 

Stands dearer to the folk for being pagan; 

And still Provengal songs and dances gladden the vintage; 

And Moorish faces, and Greek, and old Phoenician, 

Stir in the villages a stone's-throw from the rail. 

And still old names and festivals and customs 
Linger along the coast and country side; 
And still the hills stand, still the herbs diffuse 
From the warm ground the old intoxication 
Of aromatic sweetness. The waters still 
Lap blue against the rocks. The snowy Alps 
Look o'er the foot-hills and far out to sea, 
To where and when perchance a worthier race 
Than all that yet has been at length shall come 
And gaze with grateful eyes upon their beauty. 
And crown their slopes with gladness. 



Easter Day On Mt. Mounier 
(In the Alpes Maritimes) 

SILENCE.— 
Here on a rock in blue mid-air nine thousand feet, 
The whole encircling sky flooded with light — the sun an 
unfaceable point in the dazzling zenith. 

Warm, windless, basking — the snow at our feet a million 
bright points glittering; 

And far around a multitudinous sea of peaks. 

Frozen, of rock and ice, and fields of rounded whiteness. 



4o8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And jutting shoulders, and slopes of shale, and walls, 

Behind each other rising: 

All drenched, dissolved, in light, 

And waiting, silent, rapt, as if to break into song. 

But not a sound. 

Buried in invisible valleys — mid pine and larch and 
torrent-beds below — 

Villages ply their daily round of labor; 

The peasant hacks deep the soil around his vine-roots, 
or with his long pole beats the boughs of olive; 

Far by the sea, mid garden-terraces, hotels and villas, the 
great town keeps its carnival of Easter — 

Unseen, unthought-of, here. 

Here only rests the stillness of the Earth, waiting upon 
the glory of the Sun ; or here and there in some calm lakelet 
imaged. 

Ages fly by, and almost without change; dim lines of 
floating cloud just fringe the horizon ; vistas of far lands, 
distant times, unfold; 

And the silence of centuries holds the secret of history 

Lost in the light of heaven. 



At Mentone 

HY speak ye not, ye beautiful lands and seas, 
Hung like a magic curtain in the light? 
What dumbness holds you, O divine vast Earth? 



w 



Ye stretches of smooth bare rock, dotted with cactus 
and aloe. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 409 

Rising so bold in the sun, from your deep dark gorges 
below ; 

Ye pine woods on the mountain flanks; 

And ye, ye terraces of endless labor, planted with vine 
and lemon and the abounding olive, 

With peasant cots and cabins here and there, and cis- 
terns where the frogs croak night and day; 

Why speak ye not, why speak ye not? 

Why with that strange prophetic glance of yours 

Hang ye In heaven there, magic lands and seas, 

Nor say the word we wait for? 

The Campanile and the red roof of the village church show 
out seaward against the sky-line; and the cypresses stand 
sentinel In the cemetery on the hill above; 

The borage-flowers beneath the lemon branches catch 
the hues of sea and sky; runnels of water sparkle through 
the grass by the pathslde; the scent of orange-bloom is in 
the air; 

Far back into the valleys stretch the gray shade and 
gloom of the olive-yards ; and the narrow tumbled alleys 
of the mountain-villages are like huge rock-burrows of hu- 
man beings; 

The grizzled wrinkled old man on his little plot of 
ground, and the young man beside him, work doggedly on 
with their mattocks through the heat of the day; 

The broad-bosomed placid-eyed girl tends her flock of 
goats on the higher ledges. 

Ye leafing fig-trees, like silver candelabra of green flame! 
And ye, pink-blossoming peaches, dainty bright! 



4IO TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And ye, ye immemorial aromatic herbs and bushes — 
arbutus, myrtle, lavender, rosemary, thyme — trampled to 
perfume by the feet of long-forgotten races; 

And thou, blue bay, with myriad points of light, and sky 
above with subtle answering quiver, 

And high far crests of gleaming purple crag, and snows 
beyond. 

Flaming, all flaming in the light! 

Why speak ye not? 

Cave men and women and children, on your sides by the 
sea-shore. 

Your long skulls resting still in the palms of your bony 
hands, 

A score millenniums lying in the same position — 

Why wake and speak ye not? 

Why utter not the thoughts that were, for you, the world? 

Ye dead that build the rocks, and are the Earth, and fill, 
without a void, the crystal air! 

And Thou one dead (for each and all of us) — one dead 
for whom our life we'ld gladly give — 

[Thou whose remembrance passes through all sights and 
sounds, transforming and transforming them] — 

Why through the veil of this material texture showest 
thou not, dear soul of things, thy face? 

What dumbness holds you? 

O divine vast Earth, 

Why utterest not the voice we long to hear? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 411 

Monte Carlo 

ALL the long afternoon In a cloudless sky, slowly 
towards its setting the sinking sun 

Looks on a scene of wonderful beauty. 

Deep below over the rocks, through luscious tangles of 
geranium and rose and heliotrope in flower, the sea sparkles 
a rich turquoise blue; 

Palms mingle with mimosa and myrtle amid the gardens; 

The little cape of Monaco stands out, a stone's-throw 
across the harbour — the mountains of Mentone run down to 
the sea — and overhead in the clear air rise (two thousand 
feet) the great frowning rocks of Turbia, with their ancient 
Roman tower. 

In front of the Casino, on a gravelled space, dazzling In 
light, a throng of all nationalities — Germans, Russians, 
French, Italians, English, Americans — goes to and fro, 

Or sits at the Cafe tables, sipping coffee and cognac and 
maraschino — 

The puffy fussy Germans, the dull-eyed English, the 
feverish Russians and French. 

The band, beneath Its awning, plays; carriages drive up, 
and automatic cars with dusty occupants arrive; the new- 
comers alight and ascend the steps of the Casino; fashion- 
able women are in evidence, some carrying long roulette- 
purses with chains; 

Girls walk about singly or In pairs — pale, with carefully 
set profiles, lips, hair, and with immense hats and choice- 
colored costumes, orange-red or primrose or lavender or 
dead-white ; 



412 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The knots, the groups, form and reform; the waiters 
hurry to and fro ; while in a corner with easel and palette an 
artist takes a sketch of the whole scene. 

And still the sun nears its setting. 

The air floats over, with the delicious scent of orange- 
blossom and mimosa from the gardens; the shadows form 
in blue folds on the distant mountains, the rocks overhead 
stand sturdier, more and more bastion-like, as though an 
earth-shock might tumble them on the crowd ; 

In the little harbour the wharf-men, with dusty sashes 
round their waists, are coaling a great white yacht, already 
half lost in shadow; 

Along the shore in a green high-prowed boat some fisher- 
men row and drop their seine net in the same old fashion 
of centuries; 

The peasant climbs his terraces of olive, the goatherd 
looks down from his high perch among the rocks, and hears 
the faint strains of the band and catches the glance of the 
dresses. 

And still the sun nears its setting. 

And still, within, as all day since noon, the feverish crowd 
sits or stands round the tables; 

Nigh twenty tables — well nigh a thousand people, for 
the most part bent on business — all but a few by the glitter 
dazed of the eyes of the great god Chance. 

Hats doffed, a hush reigns; tiptoe they move about that 
huge saloon, as in some Temple. 

And now the great shaded lamps are lighted, hanging 
close over the green cloth. 

See! how beautiful is the face of this little old lady, with 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 413 

tiny shrunken body and trembling mittened hands — the 
deep eyes, and dark shades in the eye sockets, and pitiful 
tender mouth ! 

Each round she carefully places a gold piece on some 
compartment, and watches for the result — nor seems to 
doubt her occupation for a moment. 

Next her a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, aristo- 
cratic-featured, sits intent, and hides her hot eyes and 
straight somewhat pinched mouth under the brim of a broad 
white hat. 

Close by again, see, a woman in black, of clear frank 
simple-minded type, almost a rustic, standing behind a 
chair and trying one or two throws; 

And here a man, faultlessly attired and with absurdly 
unconcerned manner, sitting close by a croupier, and every 
now and then changing a thousand-franc note for gold — 
which he dots about the board in the most casual way, and 
apparently with complete want of success; 

And there, an old man with bald hot-veined forehead 
and grey hair, deeply thinking, pencilling, computing, 
doubles his stakes with determination as he steadily loses. 

Two demi-mondaines in waved and fretted hair, with 
long kid gloves covered with bracelets, push somewhat petu- 
lantly a little pile of gold across the board — then rake 
together their winnings and walk away. 

There again, in the shade of many standing behind her, 
sits a strange Sibyll-like woman, with bat-wing trimmings 
in her hat. A half-formed smile dwells on her impassive 
face. She always wins, they say ; and not a few furtively 
follow her lead in the chances. 

Here is a young German student with old scars across 
his face; there, a Dundreary-whiskered yellow-haired Eng- 



414 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

lishman of a type almost extinct at home; there, a business- 
like woman in mourning, with sharp nose and decided man- 
ner, evidently retrieving the fortunes of her family; 

And there behind her an elderly respectable English 
matron, most anxious to speculate, but looking carefully 
round first to see if anyone recognises her; 

And here again a big-chinned, flabby French youth with 
a suppressed boil on his neck. 

Curious, the suppressed feverish sentiment of the whole 
scene, the quiet, the politeness; the occasional sharp glances, 
or hurried retirement from the table, the swift self-satisfac- 
tions, and the inward gnashings of teeth; 

The many faces seamed with wrinkles spreading fan- 
shaped upwards from the bridge of the nose, or with 
twirled goat's-horn mustachios; 

The little bald director on his high chair, white-skinned 
and white-haired, with big head, and quick beady eyes glanc- 
ing through strong spectacles, watching closely the croupiers 
and the public; 

The detectives among the throng; 

The arrival at one of the tables of a roll of notes for 
a hundred thousand francs, to support the failing bank — the 
little stir of excitement among the gamblers, and the added 
stakes in consequence. 

And now, outside, the sun has sunk. 

Light-blue and white the calm sea lies beyond the palm- 
fronds, white sails speck the horizon, and the blue shadows 
on the silent hills are beautiful. 

The fishermen have finished their haul, and stand chatting 
on the beach as they thumb from the meshes of the net and 



, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 415 

store in baskets the fish, which bring them a few pence for 
their day's labor, presently to be served up at fabulous prices 
in the restaurants. 

The goatherds drive their goats homeward, with tinkling 
bells, and peering over the rocks look downward on the Eden 
which they may not enter. 

The primitive peasant-woman, with great mouth and ears 
unlearned of aught so modern as French or Italian, returns 
to the arched streets of her hill-top village — Roccabruna or, 
Eza or Turbia — and ere the glow of sunset dies from the 
sky is fast asleep. 

But the lights of the Casino shine reflected in the water, 
and the strains of the band, through the scented air, vibrate 
and from the gaming-tables the crowd drifts to its supper- 
tables — while late through the night the telegrams flash to 
Vienna or London or Paris. 



India, the Wisdom-land 

HERE also in India — wonderful, hidden — over thou- 
sands of miles, 

Through thousands of miles of coco-nut groves, by the 
winding banks of immense rivers, over interminable areas 
of rice-fields. 

On the great Ghauts and Himalayas, through vast jungles 
tenanted by wild beasts. 

Under the cloudless glorious sky — the sun terrible in 
strength and beauty — the moon so keen and clear among the 
tree-tops, 

In vast and populous cities, behind colors and creeds and 
sects and races and families, 



4i6 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Behind the interminable close-iitting layers of caste and 
custom, 

Here also, hidden away, the secret, the divine knowledge. 

Ages back, thousands of years lost in the dim past, 
A race of seers over the northern mountains, with flocks 
and herds, 

Into India, the Wisdom-land, descended; 
The old men leading — not belated in the rear — 
Eagle-eyed, gracious-eyed old men, with calm faces, reso- 
lute calm mouths. 

Active, using their bodies with perfect command and 
power — retaining them to prolonged age, or laying them 
down in death at will. 

These men, retiring rapt — also at will — in the vast open 
under the sun or stars, 

Having circled and laid aside desire, having lifted and 
removed from themselves the clinging veils of thought and 
oblivion. 

Saw, and became what they saw, the imperishable 
universe. 

Within them, sun and moon and stars, within them past 
and future, 

Interiors of objects and of thoughts revealed — one with 
all being — 

Life past, death past — the calm and boundless sea 

Of deep, of changeless incommunicable Joy. 

And now to-day, under the close-fitting layers of caste 
and custom, hidden away, 

The same seers, the same knowledge. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 417 

All these thousands of years the long tradition kept intact, 
Handed down, the sacred lore, from one to another, 

carefully guarded ; 

Beneath the outer conventional shows, beneath all the 

bonds of creed and race, gliding like a stream which nothing 

can detain, 

Dissolving in its own good time all bonds, all creeds. 
The soul's true being — the cosmic vast emancipated life 

— Freedom, Equality — 

The precious semen of Democracy. 



Tanzbodeli 

HIGH on a rock that juts above the Lauterbrunnen 
valley, 

Seven thousand feet in air, a little floor of grass. 

Even and smooth, with flowers — 

The little dancing-ground, they call it (and have called, 
how many centuries?) — 

And then across the gorge, and again some seven thou- 
sand feet higher, 

In slopes of rock and ice, the Jungfrau towering over, 

Proud and magnificent; and in her train seven moun- 
tains — 

(Roth-thalhorn, Gletscherhorn, Ebne Fluh, Mittaghom, 
Grosshorn, Breithorn and Tschingelhorn) — 

Standing there like a wall and sending their glaciers to 
the valley. 

[And far behind the wall, far miles and miles, but 
invisible from here, 



41 8 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Great rivers of Ice between the glistening black and 
scarred crags 

Flow, tossing and twisted, with sea-green escarpments 
and fissures, and scaly snaky moraines, and glittering snow- 
fields above them, sharp on the dark blue sky, 

All stretching, far as the eye may see, in endless silence, 

Save for the fitful rattle of falling rocks, or muffled roar 
of an avalanche.] 

But at the end of the train, and closing it and the valley, 
Rises a huge bare cliff, the frowning G'spaltenhorn, 
Diabolic and dark, an inferno of crags and pinnacles. 

This on one side; on the other the landscape opens 

To lower valleys and pastures — the huts of Gimmelwald 

and Miirren, 

Lying serene in the sunlight, with herds of cows just 

visible, 

And the blue-vista'd gorge of Lauterbrunnen running 

down to the distant hills of the twin lakes. 

And tiny villages and towns, half seen and half Imagined, 
All folded in light and glory — as the peaks above are 

folded. 

And there below us. In the huts of the upper pastures, 
the herdsmen gather and milk the cows, and in their great 
cauldrons warm the milk, and strain and press the cheeses; 

Staying a few weeks in one spot till the feed is exhausted, 
and then leading the tinkling-belled herd by precipitous paths 
to other huts and pastures. 

All summer long, till the autumnal return to the low- 
lands ; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 419 

And In the little chalets the daily life goes on, with 
knitting and spinning and beating of flax, and storage of 
winter fuel and fodder; 

And men with small short scythes mow the slopes of 
grass almost too steep to stand on, or carry their heavy 
wooden brantes of milk, braced to their shoulders, down 
the mountain-bases; 

And for a brief season the stream of visitors arrives, and 
the hotels wake from sleep, and distant music is heard; 

And guides and climbers sally forth with lanterns in the 
dark, and are glad if they may remain for a few minutes at 
early morning in the thin icy wind of some silent summit; 

And even tiny invisible trains attempt to ascend the 
unimaginable mountains. 

But here on this little palm of grass. Earth's hand up- 
lifted, 

All is the same as though the centuries moved not; 

And the peaks stand round and wreathe themselves in 
clouds, and take the colors and the lights of morning and 
evening ; 

And the moon sails, and an occasional eagle, overhead; 

And the valleys plunge below in depths and darks in- 
visible ; 

And the butterflies and flowers quiver and leap in the 
light and living air; 

And we, in our turn, on the little dancing-ground of 
centuries, 

Porming a circle, dance — till the mountains too wheel 
round us. 



420 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



A Village Church 

A STUMP of oak — a huge old ruin of a tree, shored 
up with props; 

And close beside it a vast and splendid Yew — still flour- 
ishing though fully a thousand years of age — 

With congregated stems upstanding, straight as a gothic 
pillar, and mighty outspread arms on every side — a home 
for birds for countless generations; 

And almost underneath the branches of the yew, sunk 
somewhat in the ground, 

A tiny little Church — squat roof and belfry — ^with Saxon 
walling and low dark Norman doorway. 

And evening falls, and to us sitting in the lane 

From the low door as from some cavern-mouth of the 
Earth 

Come sounds of old old chants and murmur of ancient 
prayers, and the wailing of responses, 

Wafted — and a faint faint odor of incense (for High 
Church is the service). 

And dimly seen, as through the mists of time, the glint 
of candles on the altar-table. 

Voices indeed of Time and the Earth, like some strange 
mcantation. 

Issuing from the gloom beneath the Yew-tree, 

Coming adown forgotten centuries — 

Voices and echoes of ages of Christianity, borne onward 
with the sound of Norman and Saxon chisels: 

Phrases that Chrysostom wrote, or good St. Basil; or 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 421 

borrowed from primitive liturgies of the earliest Christians; 

Scraps of antiphonies sung within the Catacombs; tags, 
litanies and Kyrie Eleisons, adapted from pagan rituals; 

Fragments of Creeds and Glorias from the days of 
Athanasius and the Councils; or sanctioned by the use of 
Sarum ; 

Gregorian chants, and quaint melodic strains from far 
Greek sources: 

These blent together. 

And laden with hopes and fears of hearts long buried, 

Come issuing from the doorway. 

And all the while under the evening sky 
The landscape stretches, so fair, so calm, so actual. 
And in the air the delicious waft of hawthorn-blossom 
Floats, and the red June sunset hangs in the West, 
And high in the branches of the Yew, a peacock, 
Preening its feathers, sits. 

How strange! 

To think of the old old life for a thousand years that has 
gathered round these stones, and since the yew was a seed- 
ling planted. 

Of the generations of men and women to whom the 
Church has been the centre of their days — their first and 
latest home; 

The old clock striking the hours and the quarters through 
years and decades. 

The old bell tolling its way through the centuries, with 
pendulum-swing of life-times; 

The infants and wide-eyed children brought in for bap- 



422 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

tism ; and after eighty years brought in again — mere broken 
husks of aged folk — for burial; 

And their children the same, and theirs again the same, 
and theirs, and theirs; 

Till at length by the font where the monk once muttered 
his Latin blessing, a smug young curate stands and lisps the 
service ; 

The marriages, the festivals, the long tradition of the 
mass and the holy communion from that last supper in 
Jerusalem ; 

The glow of religious adoration, and the pain of broken 
hearts, age after age; the hopes of Heaven, the nightmare 
doubts of Hell; 

And the trio of Gods aloft, looking on all the time, 

The Father, the Son, and the Ghost, 

And the dear Mother Mary, a little aside, apart, 

And the crowd of Saints in the background — 

The council-chamber of heaven. 

And the terrestrial councils held in the Church, 

The conferences of the local Barons with the clergy, the 
visitations of Bishops, 

The stormy scenes in the vestry, while the congregation 
is waiting in the pews; 

The Folk-motes called in the Churchyard, the prepara- 
tions for defence in time of civil war; 

The fierce fights on occasions all round the building and 
amongst the tomb-stones; and up the stone stairs of the 
Tower — the monks and priests laying about them with 
heavy candlesticks. 

To think of it all: 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 423 

Of the images that have stood in those niches and been 
cast down and broken to shards; 

And of the tapestries and altar-cloths that have been 
w^oven and stitched with pious care, and that have long, 
since faded away — 

And the little church still standing! 

And still the old vague-toned Gregorian phrases wander- 
ing down, and still the golden voice of Chrysostom sound- 
ing from afar over the hubbub of the ages, 

Floating on the waft of incense, and mingling with the 
breath of the hawthorn, this June night, 1900. 

How wonderful! 

The romance, the poetry, the heart-yearnings — 

As once perhaps they gathered round some Greek Temple : 

[Where the young man, having washed his body and 
offered a sacrifice before the laurel-crowned priest, poured 
out his heart in prayer to Apollo, touching the knees of the 
god with a leafy olive-wand ; 

Or the expectant mother came to Juno Lucina with a 
branch of palm in her hands; 

Or the old man at midnight, with propitiatory offering, 
to the shrine of Proserpine:] 

So, all these centuries and round the village church, 

A like romance has gathered. 

And presently an alien folk will come, with alien thoughts 
and customs; 

And this little shrine half-buried in the ground, with 
its candles and incense and stuffy dingy interior. 

And its three Gods sitting up aloft, and its doubtful 
glances at Mary, 



424 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Will seem as far back and strange as anything Greek or 
Egyptian. 

Thus as I dreamed, wandering away in thought through 
the long long past and future, 

The service ended, and in the last glow of sunset 

Out came a crowd of gaily-colored girls in silks and 
muslin, and village youths, and a top-hat squire or two — all 
modern as modern — 

And knowing or recking nothing of Chrysostom and 
Basil: 

Into the sweet evening air and dusk they came, with 
cheerful babble. 

Discussing the local fashions or last event in politics ; 

When sudden a yell rang out in the sky, like the yell of 
a monstrous cat, 

And with a great rush of wings, and to a chorus of 
exclamations, 

The peacock flew from its tree overhead to the East and 
into the night. 

Sheffield 

WHERE a spur of the moors runs forward into the 
great town. 
And above the squalid bare steep streets, over a deserted 
quarry, the naked rock lifts itself into the light, 
There, lifted above the smoke, I stood, 
And below lay Sheffield. 

The great wind blew over the world, 
The great soft Southwest, making a clear light along the 
far horizon; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 425 

The sky overhead was serenest blue, and here and there 
a solitary white cloud scudded swiftly below it. 

The great soft wind! How it blew in gusts as it would 
unroot the very rocks, eddying and whistling round the 
angles ! 

The great autumnal wind! bearing from the valley be- 
low clouds of paper and rubbish instead of dead leaves. 

Yet the smoke still lay over Sheffield. 

Sullenly it crawled and spread ; 

Round the bases of the tall chimneys, over the roofs of 
the houses, in waves — and the city was like a city of chim- 
neys and spires rising out of a troubled sea — 

From the windward side where the roads were shining 
wet with recent rain, 

Right across the city, gathering, mounting, as it went, 

To the Eastward side where it stood high like a wall, 
©lotting the land beyond. 

Sullenly it crawled and spread. 

Dead leaden sound of forge-hammers, 

Gaping mouths of chimneys, 

Lumbering and rattling of huge drays through the streets, 

Pallid faces moving to and fro in myriads. 

The sun, so brilliant here, to those below like a red ball, 
just visible, hanging; 

The drunkard reeling past; the file-cutter humped over 
his bench, with ceaseless skill of chisel and hammer cutting 
his hundred thousand file-teeth per day — lead-poison and 
paralysis slowly creeping through his frame; 

The gaunt woman in the lens-grinding shop, preparing 



426 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

spectacle-glasses without end for the grindstone — in eager 

dumb mechanical haste, for her work is piecework; 

Barefoot skin-diseased children picking the ash-heaps over, 

sallow hollow-cheeked young men, prematurely aged ones. 
The attic, the miserable garret under the defective roof. 
The mattress on the floor, the few coals in the corner, 
White jets of steam, long ribbons of black smoke, 
Furnaces glaring through the night, beams of lurid light 

thro.wn obliquely up through the smoke, 

Nightworkers returning home wearied in the dismal 

dawn — 

Ah! how long? how long? 

And as I lifted my eyes, lo! across the great wearied 
throbbing city the far unblemished hills, 

Hills of thick moss and heather. 

Coming near in the clear light, in the recent rain yet 
shining. 

And over them along the horizon moving, the gorgeous 
procession of shining clouds, 

And beyond them, lo! in fancy, the sea and the shores 
of other lands. 

And the great globe itself curving with its land and its 
sea and its clouds in supreme beauty among the stars. 

A Lancashire Mill-hand 

SHE died at the age of sixty-three, mother of a family of 
four children, and having during that time worked for 
fifty-three years in a Lancashire cotton-mill! 

You know the scene: the great oblong ugly factory, in 
five or six tiers, all windows, alive with lights on a dark 
winter's morning, and again with the same lights in the 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 427 

evening; and all day within, the thump and scream of the 
machinery, and the thick smell of hot oil and cotton fluff, 
and the crowds of drab-faced drab-dressed men and women 
and children — the mill-hands — going to and fro, or serving 
the machines; 

And, outside, the sad smoke-laden sky, and rows of dingy 
streets, and waste tracks where no grass grows, and tall 
chimneys belching dirt, and the same same outlook for 
miles. 

Here she had grown up a bright-eyed strenuous girl, to 
blushing maidenhood, and had become a young woman, and 
in time married; and here she lived, and bore her family, 
and died. 

In those days — it happens even now — whole families, 
father, mother and children, would go out (locking up the 
house behind them) to work in the Mills; thus to earn per- 
haps a decent combined wage. 

And in this instance it was so. But the mother worked 
hardest of all: her one idea — her blind religion — being 
work: to bring up her children to work — never to give in. 

During the last twenty-four years of her life she never 
missed a single work-morning being at the mill at 6 a.m. 

Even before that, on each occasion of her confinement, 
she would only allow herself three weeks off. When she 
returned to the mill she would leave the new-born babe 
every morning at the house of a nursing woman on the 
way. 

The youngest-born — and he it was who told it all — said 
he remembered very well as a child being picked out of bed 
in the early dawn, wrapped in a shawl, and carried through 
the streets, just as he was, to the house of an old woman. 



428 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Here his mother would just pop him down, and hurry 
on to work. 

At the last, after her half-century of toil, she was terribly 
broken with bronchitis. Often, after going out at 5.30 
a.m. into the cutting winds of winter, the gas-lamps would 
reveal her leaning for a while, wheezing and coughing, in 
the shelter of a doorway to get her breath and strength. 

Nevertheless she never missed a single day, or even a 
quarter. 

She never gave in till the very last. 

Then one day at dinner-time she came home and went 
to bed. 

But at 9 p.m. the youngest son going up found her 
dressed! — ''O yes, the house wanted tidying, and she would 
attend to it, as she was going to work in the morning, and 
there was no one else to do so!" 

But in the morning there was someone else, and the 
house was tidied without her; 

For she lay in her chamber, dead. 



A Trade 

IN a little stinking shop, hardly seven feet square — 
Just one room in a London back street, where nearly 
every room lodges a family — 

With two or three little parafEn stoves in, and bowls 
and pots horribly steaming, for dyeing gloves — 

A man, some forty years old, burly and well-brained but 
broken down and bloated with drink, plying a trade. 

'*Do you see?" he says, **I buy these white evening kids, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 429 

what have been cast off, from the slop-dealers, at so much 
a score. Then I gets a woman to mend 'em and put but- 
tons on, and then I dyes 'em black, In these 'ere pots. 

[As good as new, d'you see? See how they shine when 
they're got up — and the black'U never come orf.] 

Then I goes out into the markets — Leather Lane and 
the street-markets I mean — and sells them at sixpence a pair. 

[Yes, and I mean to get a stamp and stamp 'em inside; 
then they'll be just like new.] 

O it ain't so bad in mild weather, but when it's like this, 
cold and rainy, folk won't stop to buy nothing, they 
won't." 

And there were the gloves, shriveled, black, and hanging 
in rows on stretched strings, like the corpses of weasels and 
moles strung by gamekeepers in the woods; 

And there was the filthy suffocating odor of the den 
and the chemicals, and the intelligent eye of the man waver- 
ing in slavery to his protruding lower lip. 

"Lor!" he said, "I often stay here at nights as well as 
days. I don't live with my wife now. She's a regular 
bad 'un!" 



The Ploughboy 

THE blackbirds sing so sweetly in the morning; 
They are building a nest yonder in the hedgerow, 
where I pass at sunrise: and I think their song is sweeter 
then than else at any time of day. 

I take care not to disturb them: they work as hard as 
anybody for their living. 



430 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And I think they know me now, they are that bold. 
But they do not follow in the furrow, like the wagtails and 
robins; they seem to hang to the grass-lands. 

It is pleasant then, in the morning: the air is so sweet. 

And the smell of the earth — and I like the warm smell 
of the horses. 

Jeannie goes in the furrow, and Rob on the fallow: they 
go very steady; 

And when the ground is soft-like, it's good enough going, 
but when it's stiff it stretches your arms a bit: 

Lord! it does make you sweat! 



The Jackdaw 

CHORK! chork! 
The white sea-cliff , the crawling waves, the fringe 
of weed between, 

Midway a cleft in the rock — from above, from below 
unseen. 

'Chork! chork! 

The sun alone looks in where my nest is; the moon 
shines in the blinking eyes of my children. 

Sweet is the warm night nestling all together, sweet the 
dawn by the fresh air fanned. 

Sweet to arise and soar into the blue weather — to see 
the brown fields and pastures inland! 

To sail inland, a dozen together, to the feeding grounds, 
and unearth the fat white slugs, (chork! chork!) 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 431 

To roam and range with the others — how sweet! — and 
yet not with them, 

Forgetting never 

My own particular cleft in the rock and the tuft of sea- 
poppies beside it — like yellow flames burning — 

And the red wide throats of my chicks as they catch my 
black shadow upon them, returning. 



By THE Mersey 

I WATCHED the sunlight on the river Mersey — all 
glorious with sailing clouds and shadows — and sailing 
craft and steamers on the tide — a stirring sight! 

And heard the clang and clamor of Liverpool behind me; 
And saw in front the crowded ferry-boats crossing, and 
gulls in clusters swooping down for garbage; 

[Two steps on the green water with webbed feet — and 
up again, their full beaks raised in air!] 

And the great Atlantic liner lay at the landing-stage, 
towering up, a mighty wall of iron, full thirty feet, over the 
little people who rushed to and fro below, completing the 
last shipments and farewells. 

For even now the gong sounded in the ship's interior; 
and all was ready — every rope in place; 

The shrouds and stays were taut on mast and spar; 

Two slender wires, Marconi's, at the stem, ran sloping 
down from mizen-truck to wheel-house. 

Ready to catch (far out at sea) a faint thrill from the 
home-land. 



432 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

The little tug's towing-cable strained too at the monster 
but still four mighty hawsers held her fast; 

And still she delayed to move, and still the folk, on ship 
and shore, with jokes and quips beguiled the hour of parting. 

Then sudden rang a bugle from the deck. Down came 
blue peter; and the foghorn sounded. 

The hawsers fell, and she was free. A moment more, 
magnificent, she glided down the river. 

And instantly from all the decks (from some of the port- 
holes too) there burst a flutter of waving hands and scarves 
— a fringe of white, answered by such another fringe on 
shore ; 

And instantly I saw — what I had missed before — 

[Stronger, it seemed, than even cable and hawser, more 
numerous and tense than shrouds and stays, finer and subtler 
than Marconi wires,] 

A thousand invisible threads which bound the ship, and 
would not be cast off or loosed or snapt. 

But tugged and strained at living human hearts — and 
strained and tugged and tore — 

Till hearts were sore and broken: 

Threads of some unseen world — that stretched and 
stretched, and floated like fair gossamers in the evening 
light- 
So fine and strong, so stronger even than steel; 

And followed lengthening as the great ship faded — lost 
in the glory of sunset — 

Far out to the Atlantic. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 433 



In the British Museum Library 

HOW lovely! 
This vast vast dome — and the suspended sounds 
w^ithin it! 

Sounds and echoes of the great city vibrating tirelessly 
night and day; 

Voices and footfalls, of the little creatures that walk 
about its floor, half-lost in the huge concave; 

Suspended whispers, from its walls, of far forgotten 
centuries. 

How lovely! 

All the myriad books — well-nigh two millions of volumes 
— the interminable iron galleries, the forty miles or so of 
closely-packed shelves ; 

The immense catalogue — itself a small library — of over 
a thousand volumes; 

The thousands of editions of the Bible and parts of the 
Bible, with texts, commentaries, translations in every known 
tongue — these alone occupying sixteen volumes of catalogue; 

The thousands of Shakespeare books, or of Aristotle, the 
hundreds of Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, Dante, Montaigne, 
Goethe, Voltaire, Byron ; 

The mountain-peaks of literature, and the myriads of 
lesser hills and shoulders and points — the mole-hills and 
grass-blades even ; 

The interminable discussions of the Schoolmen and 
Grammarians, the equally interminable discussions of mod- 
ern Science — the investigations into ghostly geometries of 
four or five dimensions, or into the values of c and ff in 



434 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

the Lunar Theory, or into the alternation of generations 
in some obscure Annelids; 

How bewildering! how impossible to sum up and 
estimate ! 



And then to think how slight it all is — 

A little remnant of faded thought; 

A little dust just crumbled through the fingers, hardly 
more ; 

The residue and deposit of ages; 

The dead leaves, the skeleton foliage, which generations 
of trees have cast upon the earth — and which with infinite 
care we sort and catalogue! 

And then to leave the mouldy stuffy vault, and go out, 
and breathe freely. 

How lovely! 

One living bud upon a little branch. 

One face that looks and passes in the street, 

And these contain it all. 

How lovely! 

To think there are all these books — and one need not 
read them; 

To think of all the patient purblind accumulations, all 
the dry-as-dust, the fatuous drivel, the maundering vanity, 
the endless repetitions of vain things. 

The endless care and industry and science used to sort 
out the pearls from the vast heap — 

[And we only know they are pearls because we already 
have the same within ourselves — ] 

And to think we need not stop to count them. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 435 

What Is it, such a library? 

It Is the homage of Industrious dulness to the human soul. 

[Once there lived a man — he actually thought and felt — 
he wrote even a single sentence of sense — he uttered a word 
from his heart. 

Then all the nations said, "O If we may but attain to 
save this divine spark from oblivion, let us erect even such 
a labyrinthine monument as this."] 

Come, come away! 

The single hair of Buddha encased in a dagoba-mountain 
of brick and mortar grows now, even such a hair, upon thy 
loved one's head. 

Come, come away! leave books, traditions, all the dross 
of centuries, 

Clean, clean thy wings, and fly through other worlds. 

Heaven's stars shine all around thee; 

Deep in thy Heart the ageless celestial Museum 

Waits its explorer. All that they said — those wise ones — 

They say and repeat it now, where the plough-boy drives 
his furrow: 

Be still, O Soul, and know that thou art God. 



Empire 

Blind, fooled, and staggering from her throne, I saw 
her fall. 

Clutching at the gaud of Empire; 

And wondering, round her, sons and daughter-nations 
stood — 



436 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

What madness had possessed her. 
But when they lifted her, the heart was dead. 
Withered within the body, and all the veins 
Were choked with yellow dirt. 



O ENGLAND, fooled and blind, 
Come look, if but a moment, on yourself! 

See, through your streets — what should be living sap of 
your free blood — 

These brutish squalid joyless drink-sodden populations 
flowing ; 

And in your mills and factories the weary faces, sad 
monotonous lives, 

Or miles of cottage tenements with weakly red-eyed 
children, worn-out mothers. 

See, from your offices and shops at closing hours, the 
morbid stream — as from unhealthy glands within the body — 

Crowds issuing of anaemic youths and girls, pale, pre- 
maturely sexual, 

With flabby minds and bodies (held together chiefly by 
their clothes) and perky pick-me-up manners; 

See, on the land, where at least there should be courage 
and grit and sinew, 

A thin-legged slouching apathetic population, ignorant 
even of agriculture, 

And in the mines and coal-pits, instead of lusty power, 
poor rickety limbs and ill-built bodies; 

And ask yourself the searching question straight, 

How out of such roots shall a strong nation grow? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 437 

And then look upward, at the surface show and flaunt of 
society, 

Those that are well-fed, and (out of the labor of the 
others) have plenty of chink in their pockets — 

The club and drawing-room life — 

Look well, look well, and see the feebleness and in- 
sincerity of it: 

The scores and scores of thousands of titled and moneyed 
persons — a vast and ever-growing multitude — living the 
lives of idiots, 

Faiblesse oblige their motto: 

Of men scarce fit even to be good officers, much less 
good administrators; of women hardly worthy to be 
mothers ; 

A society wielding enormous wealth and privilege, skilled 
chiefly in the finesse of personal gain and advancement, and 
honeycombed by cynicism and unbelief: 

And for the rest, the hundreds and hundreds of thousands 
swarming in commercial dens and exchanges, 

The life of the successful business man, the company- 
promoter, the lawyer; the manufacturer, traveller, factor, 
dealer, merchant, speculator; the bank, the counting-house, 
the big store, the director's office; the advertising agent, and 
the vendor of patent medicines; 

Think of all these, and of the ideals beneath and behind 
them — and ask again the question. 

How out of such stuff can a strong nation grow? 

Where (and the question must be faced), 

Where, anywhere over the surface of England to-day, 
do the necessary conditions exist for the outcrop of a decent 
population — if only a body of a few hundreds at a time? 



438 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Where are the conditions for the growth of men and 
women — 

Healthy and well-formed of limb, self-reliant, enterpris- 
ing, alert, skilled in the use of tools, able to cope with 
Nature in her moods, and with the Earth for their sus- 
tenance, loving and trustful of each other, united and 
invincible in silent faith? 

Where is the Statesman who makes it the main item 
of his programme to produce such a population? Where 
the Capitalist, where the Landlord? 

Where indeed — in a country in which Politics are but 
a game of party bluff, where Labor is a modified slavery, 
and where Land (for such purposes as indicated) is simply 
not to be had? 

And the answer comes: The conditions do not exist. 

The conditions (says the doctor) of life and vitality are 
gone — already the process of decay has set in, which only 
a swift crisis can arrest: 

The heart is dying down, 

Withering within the body; and the veins 

Are choked with yellow dirt. 

And this Thing cries for Empire. 

This Thing from all her smoky cities and slums, her idiot 
clubs and drawing-rooms, and her brokers' dens. 
Cries out to give her blessings to the world! 
And even while she cries 
Stand Ireland and India at her doors 
In rags and famine. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 439 

These are her blessings of Empire! 

Ireland (dear Sister-isle, so near at hand, so fertile, once 
so prosperous), 

Rack-rented, drained, her wealth by absentees in London 
wasted, her people with deep curses emigrating; 

India the same — her life-blood sucked — but worse: 

Perhaps in twenty years five hundred millions sterling, 
from her famished myriads, 

Taken to feed the luxury of Britain, 

Taken, without return — 

While Britain wonders with a pious pretence of inno- 
cence 

Why famine follows the flag. 

Last, but not least, insult is added to Injury. 

For, while she prates the blessings of her Empire, con- 
tempt and studied indifference are her methods of admin- 
istering it: 

An empty House to hear the burden of the sorrows of 
India, 

And Irish questions treated with derision. 

O England, thou old hypocrite, thou sham, thou bully of 
weak nations whom thou wert called to aid, 
Thy day of ruin surely is near at hand, 
Save for one thing — which scarcely may be hoped for — 
Save that a heart of grace within thee rise 
And stay the greed of gold — which else must slay thee. 

For now I see thee like a great old tree, 
A Mother of the forest, 



440 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Prone on the ground and hollow to the core, with 
branches spread and stretched about the world. 
And truly these thy seedlings scattered round 
May spring and prosper, and even here and there 
One of thy great arms elbowed in the earth, 
Or severed from the trunk, may live again ; 
But Thou — thy tale of ancient glory is told — 
I fear thou canst but die. 

And better so perhaps; for what is good shall live. 

The brotherhood of nations and of men 

Comes on apace. New dreams of youth bestir 

The ancient heart of the earth — fair dreams of love 

And equal freedom for all folk and races. 

The day is past for idle talk of Empire; 

And who would glory in dominating others — 

Be it man or nation — he already has writ 

His condemnation clear in all mens hearts, 

^Tis better he should die. 



The British, a.d. 1901 

A S the light descends to drown and redeem the world, 
■^ ^ And the sea quivers answering to its depths, 

And the rocks and trees stand up in the blue air like 
transparent creatures, 

And the wheeling pigeons are a part of it all, 

So is Love among the children of men — 

Without which they have no being. 

For I seemed to see In vision a people that knew not Love, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 441 

With cold-mutton faces and cod-fish eyes hurrying 
around, 

Intent on endless quests, and gathering wealth in high 
and low places, and picking over the scrap-heaps of the 
world, 

And building up carefully their own good names and 
reputations. 

And following up clues of knowledge and philanthropy, 
and feeding piously and punctually the lusts of their bodies. 

And it was like half-blind folk in a dark place hurrying 
up and down. 

Hurting against one another in lost and aimless confusion, 

Weary and senseless, stupefied and without originality. 

Because indeed the one thing that might make life rational 
and vital was absent. 

And it seemed to me that the most ignorant unbred girl 
or boy amongst them, who loved another and worshiped in 
mortal form a divine creature. 

Knew more and possessed more even than them all, 

Portland 

IN the grey North-East of winter the great granite rock, 
see, overhung with cloud ! 

And from the top no portion of the mainland visible — 
only a few war-ships below, and Chesil Bank, its far end 
rising into fog. 

But behind, on the 'high plateau of the rock, among the 
quarries. 

Where neither the sea nor the ships nor the mainland, 
but only the dreary piles of stone and drearier prison-walls, 
can at any time be descried, and the armed sentinels — 



442 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

There, behold! the convicts in gangs, ten or twelve to 
a gang — and to each gang one or tw^o vv^arders, w^ith 
muskets — 

The sullen heavy-faced convicts, and (In that place) every 
day more sullen groveling — hauling at trollies, or quarrying 
or dressing the stone: 

Damned, 

Without interest In life. 



And so onward, through more warders, some with and 
some without muskets. 

And through huge stone gateways and bastions, and 
through heavy clamped doors, with endless turning of keys. 

Till at last amid all this absurd and lumbering display 
of brute force, as if for wild beasts — behind bars thick 
enough to confine an elephant — 

Lo! a well-known face! 

A gentle unharmful face, making the whole apparatus 
look foolish and ashamed of itself — 

The face of your friend whom you came to see — 

So tender and hesitating, thoughtful, and lover of chil- 
dren: 

His face, also alas! grown monotone. 

And like a caged wild animal's indeed. 

With dull and quavering eyes, that fill with tears, 

And lips whose tremulous smile belles the words 

They speak so bravely. 

And so more clanging of doors and turning of keys, and 
this one left behind again, clamped down, 
And buried in stone and iron. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 443 

Damned, 

Without interest in life: 

Neither to speak nor to hear, to speed nor to welcome, 
a word of fellowship, a single act of kindness; 

[Even a warder tucking the scanty blanket round an 
ailing prisoner was fined;] 

Never to use nor exercise the sense of helpfulness — the 
source of all human virtue; 

Never to feed but only starve the soul; 

Is this the Doom? 

To hear no news from the outer world, save at unimagin- 
able intervals a letter; 

To read no book — save some goody-goody inhuman rub- 
bish recommended by the Chaplain; 

To nauseate, and yet to hunger ravenously for the same 
scant ever-same food ; 

To sicken at and hate the same insults and loud impera- 
tives of the jailer, unendingly continued, unendingly borne — 
the same idiotic vacancy of the cell — 

The three-legged stool, the can, the barred little window ; 

The same long hours of the night with pain at the heart, 
the sound of silly fingers every hour at the slide of the 
spy-hole, and the flashing of the night-ofKcer's lantern in 
one's face; 

The recurring effort of the irritated mind and starved 
body to compose themselves to sleep ; 

In vain: the same same thoughts thought over and over 
and over and over again; 

The same little stock of memories and fancies brought 
with one into this whited sepulchre — getting smaller and 
slighter daily — now like a wheel with ever rapider motion 
going round and round, 



444 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Till the brain itself is reeling. 

[And now a Fear, perhaps for the safety of some loved 
one outside, leaps into the grinning circle and courses with 
it; and now another, perhaps for one's own fate in the 
years still in front ; and now — worst of all phantoms — the 
Dread that one's mind is giving way: till, in fact, out of 
momentary sleep awaking to the same awful nightmare, 
a chill runs down the back, the body breaks in sweat, forms 
gibber and voices jabber — and presently the doctor is called.] 

Mind starved and body starved, and heart, too, starved — 
Is this the Doom of Man to his outcast fellow? 

Only for those whose minds and hearts are already 
stunted — for the merely brutish by nature — the fate re- 
served is easier. 

For them, two thoughts alone dominate — Hunger, the 
ever-present craving for food, the counting and computing 
of meals in prospect, sufficiently degrading; 

And Sex, the everlasting curiosity and imagination (and 
act if possible) ; 

But no word, no possibility presented to them, of Man- 
hood ; no word, no possibility, of Love. 

And so for those who care not that such possibilities 
should be presented, 

Is the easier fate reserved! 

China, a.d. 1900 

FAR in the interior of China, 
Along low-lying plains and great river-valleys, and 
by lake-sides, and far away up into hilly and even mountain- 
ous regions, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 445 

Behold ! an immense population, rooted in the land, rooted 
in the clan and the family, 

The most productive and stable on the whole Earth. 

A garden one might say — a land of rich and recherche 
crops, of rice and tea and silk and sugar and cotton and 
oranges ; 

Do you see it? — stretching away endlessly over river- 
lines and lakes, and the gentle undulations of the lowlands, 
and up the escarpments of the higher hills ; 

The innumerable patchwork of cultivation — the poignant 
verdure of the young rice; the sombre green of orange 
groves; the lines of tea-shrubs, well-hoed, and showing 
the bare earth beneath ; the pollard mulberries ; the plots 
of cotton and maize and wheat and yam and clover; 

The little brown and green-tiled cottages with spreading 
recurved eaves, the clumps of feathery bamboo, or of sugar- 
canes ; 

The endless silver threads of irrigation-canals and ditches, 
skirting the hills for scores and hundreds of miles, tier 
above tier, and serpentining down to the lower slopes and 
plains — 

The accumulated result, these, of centuries of ingenious 
industry, and of innumerable public and private benefac- 
tions, continued from age to age; 

The grand canal of the Delta-plain extending, a thronged 
waterway, for six hundred miles, with sails of junks and 
bankside villages innumerable; 

The chain-pumps, worked by buffaloes or men, for throw- 
ing the water up slopes and hillsides, from tier to tier, 
from channel to channel; 

The endless rills and cascades flowing down again, into 



446 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

pockets and hollows of verdure, and on fields of steep and 
plain ; 

The bits of rock and wild wood left here and there, with 
the angles of Buddhist temples projecting from among the 
trees ; 

The azalea and rhododendron bushes, and the wild deer 
and pheasants unharmed; 

The sounds of music and the gong — the Sin-fa sung at 
eventide — and the air of contentment and peace pervading; 

A garden you might call the land, for its wealth of crops 
and flowers, 

A town almost for its population. 

A population denser, on a large scale, than anywhere 
else on the earth — 

Five or six acre holdings, elbowing each other, with lesser 
and larger, continuously over immense tracts, and running 
to plentiful market-centres; 

A country of few roads, but of innumerable footpaths and 
waterways. 

Here, rooted in the land, rooted in the family. 

Each family clinging to its portion of ancestral earth, 
each oifshoot of the family desiring nothing so much as 
to secure its own patrimonial field, 

Each member of the family answerable primarily to the 
family-assembly for his misdeeds or defalcations. 

All bound together in the common worship of ancestors, 
and in reverence for the past and its sanctioned beliefs and 
accumulated prejudices and superstitions; 

With many ancient wise simple customs and ordinances, 
coming down from remote centuries, and the time of Con- 
fucius, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 447 

This vast population abides — the most stable and the 
most productive in the world. 

And Government touches it but lightly — can touch it 
but lightly. 

With its few officials, its scanty taxation (about half-a- 
crown per head), and with the extensive administration of 
justice and affairs by the clan and the family — little scope 
is left for Government. 

The great equalized mass-population pursues its even and 
accustomed way, nor pays attention to edicts and foreign 
treaties, unless these commend themselves independently; 

Pays readier respect, in such matters, to the edicts and 
utterances of its literary men, and the deliberations of the 
Academy. 

And religious theorizing touches it but lightly — can touch 
it but lightly. 

Established on the bedrock of actual life, and on the 
living unity and community of present, past, and future 
generations. 

Each man stands bound already, and by the most power- 
ful ties, to the social body — nor needs the dreams and 
promises of heaven to reassure him. 

And all are bound to the Earth. 

Rendering back to it as a sacred duty every atom that 
the Earth supplies to them (not insensately sending it in 
sewers to the sea). 

By the way of abject common sense they have sought the 
gates of Paradise^ — and to found on human soil their City 
Celestial ! 






448 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And this is an outline of the nation which the Western 
nations would fain remodel on their own lines^ — 

The pyramids standing on their own apexes wanting to 
overturn the pyramid which rests foursquare on its base! 

But China remembers too well the time when it too 
endured the absurdities of monopolized Land and Capital, 
of private property in water and other necessaries, of glar- 
ing wealth and poverty, and the practical enslavement of 
one man by another; 

It remembers even yet the discomfort of standing on its 
own apex, 

And oddly enough has no intention of returning to those 
times. 



Standing beyond Time, 

As the Earth to the bodies of all men gives footing and 
free passage, yet draws them to itself with final overmas- 
tering force, and is their bodies — 

So I their souls, 

I am the ground of thy soul; 

And I am that which draws thee unbeknown — veiled Eros 
Visitor of thy long night-time ; 

And I that give thee form from ancient ages. 
Thine own — yet in due time to return to Me 
Standing beyond Time, 



450 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



A 



Who but the Lover should Know 

H ! who but the lover at last should know what 
Death is?. 



To give one's body to the earth; 

To rise through the roots of the trees and to feel once 
more the sunshine — floating as a leaf in air; 

To star out months together with mosses and bog-plants 
on the lonely mountain-sides, to lurk under the speckled 
fungi in the woods, looking up at the traveller as he passes ; 

To be sucked in, in the mad rush of the sap through the 
veins of the chestnut in spring, and to burst in its great 
shining buds; 

To catch at, dimly as in dreams, the wonderful thoughts 
that sweep through — the great rushing prophetic dreams of 
the life-laden earth ; 

To feel the call of existence in new and strange fashion — 

To arise and ascend; 

To mix with the animals roaming over the Earth ; 

To be and to include them — to put on purposely the 
mask which they put innocently on ; 

To be one of two swallows clinging to the southern 
wall, twittering, discussing sites for a nest; to be a snake 
basking coiled on a rock in the sun; 

To rejoice in my swiftness and strength, my inevitable 
action and instinct; 

To pass into the bodies of«men and women, to be arrayed 
in their hair, and to look forth out of their eyes; 



lOWARDS DEMOCRACY 451 

To be the long lines of habit in them, the food that is 
sweet in their mouths, the poison that is bitter; 

To be the thoughts that they think, and the dreams that 
they dream; to circle very close; 

To circle closer than all thought; to touch and startle — 
like the sound of distant music heard through the rushing of 
a storm ; 

To be the presentation of new unsuspected ideals — 

To be buried in the ground; 

To be buried deep in the ground of all existence; 

To lie in the soil whence all human life springs, and 
whither it returns again; 

Listening as in a dream of joy to the sound of innu- 
merable voices, 

And to the sound of innumerable footsteps coming nearer 
through all the ages; 

To see and to be unseen; to hear and to be that which 
no ear hath heard ; 

To turn an open impartial eye without blame on every 
creature ; to hold up a mirror, 

So tallying nature that to it all men and things run to 
look upon themselves and learn their parts; 

To give products and receive materials; 

To have the adit, to be the hidden link, the life which 
does not appear; 

To love without sorrow ; and to send love forth to bathe 
the world, healing it from its wounds — 

Ah! who at last but the lover should know what Death 
is? 



452 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



w 



The Everlasting Now 

HEN all life has been rich in experience shall not 
Death be rich in experience also? 



Hold fast to the actual, and do not go outside good 
sense ; 

Do not let your mind stray into a world of negations and 
impossibilities, or try to image some future time when it 
will be unable to image anything — for there is no sense in 
that. 

Do not wander too far into time at all, lest with the 
everlasting Now — the centre of all life and experience, and 
your own true lover — 

You fail to keep your first appointment. 

Now IS THE Accepted Time 

AMID all the turmoil and the care — the worry, the 
fever, the anxiety. 
The gloomy outlook, fears, forebodings, 
The effort to keep up with the rush of supposed neces- 
sities, supposed duties, 

The effort to catch the flying point of light, to reach 
the haven of Peace — always in the future — 
Amid all, glides in the little word Now. 

As when the winds of March with their long brooms 
sweep the dead leaves from the surface of the ground, and 
the Earth in virgin beauty with the growing grass once 
more appears; 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 453 

So when all this debris of thought from the Past, of 
anxiety about the Morrow, is at last swept away, 

Does the vast ever-Present beneath reveal its perfect 
rondure. 

A Summer Day 

SEEING once again the ethereal blue of the sky — ^the 
limpid air — the all-enfolding sunlight, 

Here in the great tumultuous abounding city, or again In 
the far woods among the fallen oak-boles and the fox-gloves, 

The far floating ever haunting shimmer of uncaught 
beauty: — 

I recognise that in all and everywhere it is the same: 

Somehow to hold and have this in oneself — 

This light and everlasting space, 

This real eternal, whence the sensible light and space 
are born — 

Somehow to hold from all things still a little aloof for 
this; 

No rock that stands above the river's edge — but that 
which illumines the rock; 

No brown sail in the bay — but the sweet undirected air 
that wafts it; 

No pleasure, but the greater which lets the pleasure go 
or come; 

Not anything, but that which brings to all things grace 
and light. 

Still the far clouds just rim the Western sky — domed 
masses clear above, below lost in the summer haze: 

So vast the orb of heaven enfolds the earth — the rocks 



454 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

and seas and rivers — and the dream- walking millions of the 
earth ; 

So vast the soul of every man enfolds his mortal deeds 
and thoughts, 

Deeds, thoughts, desires, confused and contrary, vexing 
each other and vexed, in myriads, every shade and color, 
form and tongue, strange w^anderers, 

Dream-v^alking, till at length the real day may dawn. 



The Central Calm 

DRAWING back for a moment from Time, and its 
superficial claims and conclusions, 

Realising for a moment the artistic nature of the utter- 
ance of the Universe: 

That all is for expression, and that for this end com- 
mencement and finale, first evolved and latest evolved, are 
equally important; 

That Progress is a word which may be applied to any 
world-movement or individual career in the same sense 
as it may be applied to the performance of a musical work, 

Which progresses to its final chord, yet the conclusion 
of the whole is not in the final chord, but in that which 
runs beneath and inspires the entire web — in that which 
from first to last the whole complex succession of chords 
and phrases indicates: 

Realising this — 

Realising — thus for a moment withdrawn — that there is 
no need to hurry, no need to dash against the bars; 

But that Time itself rushing on with amazing swiftness 
in its vast and endless round, with suns and systems, ages 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 455 

and geologic epochs, races and tribes of beings, mineral, 
vegetable, animal, and ethereal, circle beyond circle, in- 
fallibly fulfils and gives utterance to the glorious w^hole: 

Like one in the calm that is the centre of a cyclone — 
guarded by the very tornado around — 

Undisturbed, yet having access equally to every side, 

I drink of the deep w^ell of rest and joy, 

And sit with all the gods in Paradise. 



Widening Circles 

THERE is no gap nor any flaw. 
I establish my base of operations here, you estab- 
lish yours in distant grounds, a million years back or a 
million years forward: 
It makes no difference. 

Our widening circles inevitably meet and interfuse some 
time. 

When I Look upon Your Faces 

CHILDREN, dear children, when I look upon your 
faces, 

Lo! all the hidden griefs, the sorrows and the vain 
imaginings. 

The longings, and the desperate struggles and hatreds. 

The jealousies, angers — and the sudden joys, breaking 
the heart's doors open — 

Pass in dumb show before me. 

Like figures in a dream I see them there gesticulating — 
behind a veil, in silence. 



456 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And still you move to your daily ways and works, seem- 
ing so unconcerned — as I to mine — 

And still the waves of Time wash down between us, 
And soon shall wash even you and all your dreams 
Into the void — and mine. 

But even so, dear children, I forebode 
Deliverance ; 

Some better thing than all our dreams and longings: 
One Life — and all these images in their strange pro- 
cession. 

Its mystic intimation. 



Life Behind Life 

WHAT joys, what strange joys, lurk behind the actual! 
See how great the pleasures of the body, of eating, 
drinking, resting; or of the mind, of knowledge, ambition, 
power ; 

And yet behind these what strange pleasures: 

Pleasures of fierce pain endured, pleasures of the body 
exposed to bullet-wounds, scourges, fire — shattered and cast 
away ; 

Pleasures of pleasure refused, of simple withdrawnness 
and indifference, or of mastery and ascendancy. 

Ever breaking out behind the actual some unknown force 
or being. 

Throwing the whilom body off like a husk, with its 
former capacities and needs. 

Creating new joys, fiercer wilder than those of old. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 457 



The Stupid old Body 

DO not pay too much attention to the stupid old Body. 
When you have trained It, made It healthy, beautiful, 
and your willing servant, 

Why, do not then reverse the order and become Its 
slave and attendant. 

[The dog must follow its master — not the master the 
dog.] 

Remember that If you walk away from It and leave It 
behind. It will have to follow you — it will grow by follow- 
ing, by continually reaching up to you. 

Incredibly beautiful It will become, and suffused by a 
kind of Intelligence. 

But if you turn and wait upon it — and its mouth and Its 
belly and Its sex-wants and all its little ape-tricks — pre- 
paring and dishing up pleasures and satisfactions for these. 

Why, then Instead of the body becoming like you, you 
will become like the body — 

Incredibly stupid and unfqrmed — going back In the path 
of evolution — you too with fish-mouth and toad-belly, and 
imprisoned in your own members, as it were an Ariel In a 
blundering Caliban. 

Therefore quite lightly and decisively at each turning 
point In the path leave your body a little behind — 

With its hungers and sleeps, and funny little needs and 
vanities — paying no attention to them; 

Slipping out at least a few steps in advance, till it catch 
you up again. 



458 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Absolutely determined not to be finally bound or weighted 
down by it, 

Or fossilized into one set form — 
Which alone after all is Death. 



D 



The Wandering Lunatic Mind 

O not pay too much attention to the wandering lunatic 
Mind. 



When you have trained it, informed it, made it clear, 
decisive, and your flexible instrument and tool. 

Why, do not then reverse the order and become the mere 
fatuous attendant and exhibitor of its acrobatic feats (like 
a keeper who shows off a monkey). 

Remember that if you walk away from it, leaving it as 
dead, paying it no attention whatever — it will have to follow 
you — it will grow by following, by reaching up to you, from 
the known to the unknown, continually; 

It will become at last the rainbow-tinted garment and 
shining interpreter of Yourself, and incredibly beautiful. 

But if you turn and wait always upon it, and its idiotic 
cares and anxieties, and endless dream-chains of argument 
and imagination — 

Feeding them and the microbe-swarms of thought con- 
tinually, wasting upon them your life-force ; 

Why, then. Instead of your Mind becoming your true 
companion and Interpreter, It will develop antics and a St. 
Vitus' dance of its own, and the form of a wandering 
lunatic. 

Incredibly tangle-haired and diseased and unclean, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 459 

In whose features you, In sadness and In vain, will search 
for your own Image — terrified lest you find It not, and 
terrified too lest you find It. 



Therefore quite decisively, day by day and at every junc- 
ture, leave your Mind for a time in silence and abeyance; 

With Its tyrannous thoughts and demands, and funny 
little fears and fancies — the long legacy of ages of animal 
evolution ; 

Slipping out and going your own way Into the Unseen — 
feeling with your feet if necessary through the darkness — 
till some day it may follow you; 

Absolutely determined not to be bound by any of its 
conclusions; or fossilized In any pattern that It may invent; 

For this were to give up your kingdom, and bow down 
y^ur neck to Death. 



As A Mould for some Fair Form 

AS a mould for some fair form Is made of plaster, and 
then when It is made and the form is cast therein, 
the plaster Is broken and flung aside — 

So, and for a form fairer than aught thou canst Imagine, 
thy body, thy Intellect, thy pursuits and accomplishments, 
and all that thou dost now call thyself, 

Are the mould which in time will have to be broken and 
flung aside. 

Their outlines are the inverse of thy true form: looking 
on them thou beholdest — what thou art not. 



46o TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



A 



Nothing Less than All 
LL, all — and nothing less than all. 



Ever men say: Here lies the truth, There lies the truth 
— Take this, cast that aside — Throw in thy lot with us — 
We are the wise, the rest are fools. 

But I am as one dumb — I try to speak, to say what is in 
my mind, but words fail me. 

I go with these wise folk a little way, and then I draw 
back again; I throw in my lot with them, and then alas! 
I throw in with the fools. 

I stultify myself, and am like a thing of no shape. 

The fault is mine, that I cannot say what I want to say 
— I cannot for the life of me answer the questions that are 
continually being asked. 

Is it for pleasure and the world and the present, or 
for death and translation and spirituality, that we must 
live? Is it for asceticism and control, or for ingenuity and 
sweet enjoyment? 

Does the truth lie with the East or with the West — with 
Buddhists and the follows of Lao Tsze, or with those who 
span seas and rivers by bridges and wing aerial flights by 
machinery? 

Is it best to be an idler or a worker, an accepted person 
or a criminal? 

Shall the town be my home, with its rush of interests and 
sympathies, its fascinations and magnetisms of the crowded 
pavements ? 

Or the country, with its gracious solitude and the pure 
breath and beauty of the air and the fields? 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 461 

Shall I give my life (how gladly!) to my one, my only 
lover — absorbed, we two, our days, in single devotion to 
each other — 

Or shall I pour it out upon a hundred and a thousand 
beautiful forms (so beautiful) to spread from them as in 
an ever-widening ring to others? 

Which is the most desirable or useful trade — to be a 
musician, or a geologist, or a navvy? to work laughing and 
joking with one's mates in a big workshop, or to walk at the 
plough-tail all day in the quiet landscape under the slow 
changes of the weather and the clouds? 

To be a mathematician tracking in one's study the hidden 
properties of curves and closed figures, or an astronomer 
noting the star-transits on which a nation's time-reckoning 
depends? 

To be a file-forger with hooved palm sweating before 
one's fire in summer, or a cobbler cursing the brittleness of 
his wax in winter? 

Or a potter or a moulder or a parson or a prostitute or 
a town-councillor? 

Is it better to be surly and rude, or sympathetic and 
suave, to be quick-tempered or patient, hot-blooded or cold- 
blooded, 'cute or simple, moral or immoral? 

To join the society for the suppression of Vice, or to be 
one of the persons to be supprest? to be partial to drink, or 
to be a teetotaler? 

For the life of me I cannot answer all these questions — 
I acknowledge that I am a fool. 

Sometimes with this inability to take sides comes a 
strange terror of losing all outline, of losing my identity, 
my proper consciousness, everv^thing; 



462 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Till I think of the Present and the work I have actually 
to do — and then comes relief; 

Then instantly everything is decided — one's place, and 
the part one has to play — nor is there any doubt whatever 
about the next move. 

For the moment I am pledged to this or that; 

Yet I feel that in the end I must accept all, 

And shall be content with nothing less than all. 



Believe Yourself a Whole 

BELIEVE yourself a Whole. 
These needs, these desires, these faculties — 

This of eating and drinking, the great pleasure of food, 
the need of sex-converse and of renewal in and from the 
bodies of others; 

The faculty of sight, the wonderful panorama of the 
visible, and of hearing; 

The inquisitive roaming brain, the love of society and 
good fellowship ; 

The joy of contest, the yearnings of Religion, the mystic 
impulses of night, of Nature, of solitude ; 

All these and a thousand other impulses, capacities, de- 
terminations, are indeed Yourself — the output and evidence 
and delineation of Yourself. 

They cannot (in any permanent sense) be peeled ofi and 
thrown away; 

They spring inevitably deep down out of yourself — and 
will recur again wherever you are. 

There is no creature in the whole range of Being from 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 463 

the highest to the lowest which does not exhibit these and 
similar capacities, or the germs of them, in itself. 

You are that Whole which Nature also is — and yet you 
are that Whole in your own peculiar way. 

Were your eyes destroyed, still the faculty of sight were 
not destroyed: 

Out of the same roots again as before would the optic 
apparatus spring. 

Should you die of starvation you would only begin im- 
mediately after death to take food in another way; and the 
impulse of union which is at the base of sex lies so deep 
down that the first reawakening of consciousness would 
restore it. 

Believe yourself a Whole, indivisible, indefeasible^ — 
Reawakening ever under these, under those, conditions — 
Expanding thus far, expanding less far, expanding far- 
ther; 

Expanding this side, expanding that side, expanding all 
sides ; 

Ever diverse yet the same, the same yet diverse — in- 
exhaustibly continuous with the rest; 

And made for love — to embrace all, to be united ulti- 
mately with all. 



The Body Within the Body 

WHEN life like a ghastly panorama stretches before 
the eye of the spirit — 
A festal procession, as it were, continually gulfing itself in 
a quicksand; 



464 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

When — waking as in a nightmare at dead of night — 

One thinks of all the disease, the weariness, the suffering 
of the world as it is — 

Of the cancer eating slowly onward with its roots en- 
twined in the vitals — the vista of agony and defeat by the 
cursed thing; 

Of the incurable filth, the venom in the lungs, breeding 
slime and death within one through the interminable 
months ; 

And these but samples of what waits, more or less, for 
almost all; 

When one thinks of the sudden senseless accidents which 
are for ever occurring — the ship returning home, full, with 
brimming hearts, from the Antipodes, ripped on a rock and 
gone in a moment to the bottom; 

A lurch, somewhere, of the shrinking earth-strata, and a 
whole city tumbled in shrieks and ruin ; 

The ^'weight" coming on in the coal-pit, the ominous fall 
of small stones from the roof, the awful cracking of the 
great oak-props, the hurried rush of the miners and their 
swifter still entombment; 

The breaking of a cable, or of a driving band in ma- 
chinery, a flaw in a wheel, a random step on a stairway — 
and husband torn from wife, and mother from child, or 
child from mother; 

Death and destruction and the messengers of death and 
destruction in myriad forms still waiting to fulfil the in- 
evitable doom; 

When, I say, the necessity arises to face all this — and 
face it out — 

Then somehow, underneath it all, 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 465 

I seem to see that the strands of affection and love, 
auroral, shooting from one to another — so tender, so true, 
and life-long, 

And longer than life — holding together the present and 
past generations; 

The currents of love and thought streaming in the 
watches of the night from far and near, from one to 
another, 

(Streaming all the more powerfully for the very hin- 
drances and disasters which arrive or threaten,) 

And building in the bustle of the day such likeness of 
their dreams as may be — 

That these inner are after all more real in some sense 
than the outer things — that they surpass in actual vitality 
and significance even all this artillery of horrors. 

I dream that these are the fibres and nerves of a body 
that lies within the outer body of society — 

A network, an innumerable vast interlocked ramification, 
slowly being built up — all dear lovers and friends, all 
families, groups, all peoples, nations, all times, all worlds 
perhaps — 

Of which the outer similitudes and shells, like the minute 
cells of an organism, are shed and die in endless multitudes 
with continual decay and corruption ; 

But the real individuals persist and are members of a 
Body, archetypal, eterne. 

Glorious, the centre and perfection of life and organisa- 
tion, 

And the source of all the Light in the universe. 



466 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 



In an Old Quarry 

ONCE In an old quarry, 
In a heathery nook among the rocks, unclothed as 
I reclined in the sun, facing only the great hills and the sky, 
Millions of years floating softly down through the aerial 
blue, 

Thy words — millions millions of human forms — 
I saw descending. 

Tiny, into the tissue of grass and tree and herb passing — 
into the mouths and bodies of men and animals — and here 
and there a fitting home in the sex-cells finding. 
At length, clothed mortal men and women. 
Out on the actual world I saw them step: 
Thy words — thy wandering words — each one alone, so 
lost, so meaningless, 

Each seeking his true mates, if so to spell 
One sentence of thy great world-wisdom out. 



The Soul to the Body 

NOW at last after thousands of years, dear Body, from 
thy prison emerging. 
Thy agelong tomb and sepulchre, 

[Where, with what swathing-bands, like Lazarus, what 
mummy-cloths, what cerements of fashion custom ignorance 
thou wast bound,] 

Strange chrysalis, thy dead sheath bursting! 
Strange glorious Lover! 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 467 

To feel again thy arms enfolding, to breathe the fragrance 
of thy sun-kist skin, how sweet ! 

What long estrangement, dear, what nightmare has it 
been, divided us? 

From far away what long slow exodus? 

Why to the tomb in ages past didst thou descend — of 
Death and dread Corruption? — 

While I, poor ghost, went wandering belated, and home- 
less and forlorn about the world? 

For, as the delicate vein-winged gnat from its watery case, 
as Eve from Adam's side, as Psyche from the dark embrace 
of Eros, 

So from thee gliding, far-back, long ago — dimly I mind 
me now — 

Slow-differenced, this wondering wandering Self was I. 

[Dimly I mind the agelong alienation: 
Thou body, of thy mate bereft, and falling unclean, dis- 
eased, by devils possest, in mire and filth — 
Blind Maenad by thy own senses led astray! 
While I, poor soul, half formed and maimed of half, 
Abstract, absurd, amazed, and crucified, 
To arid and unending toils was doomed, and loneliness.] 

After it all to thee, dear, to return, 
To feel again thy close-enfolding arms — how sweet ! 
To know Thee now at last — (long veiled and hidden) — 
Through Nature moving, as the Sun and Moon 
Move through the crystal heaven, self-sent, divine, 
Transparent, tameless, more than spirit or matter; 
Dear body, brushing with thy feet the grasses, or resting 
outlined by the rocks and sea — 



468 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

To rest with thee, content, in perfect union, 

O in such deep and fathomless joy to rest beside thee, 

Thy mate and friend, stricken with doubts no more. 

Now once more in thy lungs the winds of heaven — as 
out there in the forest-branches — nestle; 

The waters flowing in the brooks flow on in crimson tide 
through artery and vein ; and lift the little valve-doors and 
pass by with whispered secrets from the clouds and hills. 

Sweet now the food-fruits pass without corruption inward 
and outward of the body's frame; 

Clean is the ark and holy chamber of the woman, the 
seed-vessel of the man ; 

And clean the body all suffused with passion 

Till the right mate arrives. 

O Love, with fragrance of whose wine the world is 
vanquished ! 

Great Ocean swaying far from atom to atom! sweet 
aromatic transpiration of the clods! 

Diffused vast Life, now here, now there, in definite 
lightning-flash thy visible work fulfilling! 

For this, even for thy habitation, hast thou prepared 
these bodies. 

And thou, little one, so soon to dissolve into earth and 
air and sea. 

Thy form, my love, I accept — and am no more divided 
from thee. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 469 



To Become a Creator 

I HEARD a Voice saying: 
See now in the end you shall stand Lord of the 
World. 

When those desires which are injurious to others have 
departed from you — when all desires born of hate; 

When you have become strong to conquer the world, 
strong to endure and conquer so the hatred and the injuri- 
ousness of others; 

When what you will, you will with the whole force of 
your nature, undivided. 

Undivided by fear, conscience, conventions, and the dis- 
tinctions of self and not-self; 

Then, lo! all that you wish — all that your heart forms 
for an image of its longings — shall take shape before you ; 

You shall create the things which are the fulfilment of 
your needs; 

There is nothing that shall not be yours. 

For this world you see around — these trees, mountains, 
these high city streets and the myriad faces that pass among 
them — are not all these but images? 

Images, to the Heart of which with restless longing you 
have indeed so often sought to penetrate. 

Say then, if you attain to be ruler of your own thoughts, 
and of the images which spring from your heart, is it so 
much that you should be arbiter also of these others, and 
touch to the Heart they spring from? 



470 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

For deep down there is, may-be, no difference — 
And when the desires that are born of Hate and Fear 
and Distrust are gone, there is no difference. 

And I said: Am I not my own thoughts, and when these 
die, shall I not also die? 

And the Voice said : Look again — 

These thoughts, these images, that pass before you — they 
pass before You. 

Then how can they be Yourself? 

Nevertheless it is true that they proceed from you. 

They proceed from the Heart, and the mind perceives 
them. 

And so it shall be eternally. 

And all This, and all that you see, and all that you think, 
and all that you experience, is the evidence of Yourself, 

Yourself coming to you over the ages. 

Therefore go forth — and be in truth thine own Creator — 

No longer in fear and trembling but in kingship and 
power meeting the mystery of the world; 

By the pure and beautiful desires which spring within 
thee, like fountain-waters from a hillside welling (which 
flow and grow into an endless stream running ever towards 
the centre of the Earth) — by these guided. 

Take with unerring choice, and make and mould, and 
carve and cut and force thy way — 

To the centre of all creation — to the Heart indeed of all 
lovers. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 47i 



After Fifty Years 

LOOKING back now, after fifty years and more, when 
the main work of life is done, 
When its acquisitions, its results, its alliances, are before 
me, and but few new elements remain to be added, 

I ask myself: What is the gist, what the end, what the 
gain of it all? 

What shall I take with me now when Death comes — a' 
one coming homeward takes a flower in his hand for a tokei 
that he has strayed in gracious fields? 

Is it applause and fame? But this, if it came to me, weri 
only as a little stir of wind might be, to one seeking hi: 
lover in the night: a pleasant breeze — that yet might blow 
his lamp out! 

Is it all the pleasure of life that I have had — in the 
beautiful woods and on the mountains, in the sun and in the 
waters, in social life and jollity, in my actual work? 

Yea, these things were beautiful, but I have passed and 
left them and can return no more. The fields remain, but 
the flowers I plucked there are fading already on my bosom. 

Is it all my acquisitions — of goods, of skill, of knowledge, 
of character — but what are they for myself but weariness, 
save I can yield them to the hands of one I love? 

O little heart, where my friends my dear ones live, thou 
alone remainest! 

While I live thou livest, and while thou livest they live, 
whose home is within thy walls. 

Methinks that when I die I still shall hold Thee; 



472 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Methinks that when the world fades my little heart shall 
grow, 

And grow and grow Into another World, 
And be my Paradise where I shall find 
My lovers, and they me, for evermore. 



T 



Out of the House of Childhood 
O take by leaving, to hold by letting go. 



Now, when out of the house of your childhood you are 
departing, 

Where you suffered, where you joyed, in the old con- 
fused childish way, not certainly distinguishing things, 

Now suddenly, as you leave, how it all becomes clear, as 
in a kind of new and incomparable light! 

This is the corner where your little bed stood against the 
wall, this the window where the moon peeped, and the 
white and ghostly dawn came; 

These are the closed rooms and chests Into which you 
were so seldom permitted to look ; this was the daily routine 
of life which for some inscrutable reason was so rigidly 
adhered to; 

These are the stairs where up and down moved such 
queer processions — funerals and weddings, and bustling 
visitors and elderly aunts and uncles, and the parson and 
the doctor in their turn ; 

And you were bade stand aside since you could not 
understand — 

But now you understand It all. 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 473 

Now, leaving it all, 

The window truly for you will never stand open again, 
nor the sweet night-air through it blow — never again for 
you on the little coverlet of your bed will the moonlight fall; 

And yet mayhap for the first time will the wind really 
blow and the moonlight fall, 

For the first time shall you really see the face of your 
father whom you used to meet so often on the stairs. 

All the spaces and corners of the house, and the swinging 
of the doors, and the tones and voices of those behind them, 
shall be full of meanings which were hidden from you while 
you dwelt among them. 

Nor shall they ever leave you. 

Never so long as yourself lasts shall you forget your 
mother smoothing out the pillow under your head, last 
thing at night, and kissing you as you slept: 

Nay, every year so long as you live shall you understand 
that act better — shall you come closer in reality to her whom 
as a child you saw but through a glass darkly. 

Leaving and again leaving, and ever leaving go of the 
surfaces of objects. 

So taking the heart of them with us. 
This is the law. 

The beauty of a certain scene in Nature, 

The beauty, the incomparable beauty of the face and 
presence of the loved one; 

The sweetness of pleasure — of food, of music, of exer- 
cise, or of rest and sleep; 

All these are good to obtain and to hold ; 



474 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

Yet (when the need arises) to be able to dispense with 
them — that is indeed to hold and to realise them even more 
deeply. 

When at last Death comes, then all of Life shall be to us 
as the house of our childhood — 

For the first time we shall really possess it. 

But who is ready to die to life now, he even now pos- 
sesses it. 

Little Brook without a Name 

LITTLE brook without a name, that hast been my com- 
panion so many years; 

Hardly more than a yard wide, yet scampering down 
through the fields, so bright so pure, from the moorland a 
mile away; — 

The willows hang over thee, and the alders and hazels; 
and the oak and the ash dip their feet in thy waves; 

And on thy sunny banks in Spring the first primroses 
peep, and celandines, and the wild hyacinths lavish fragrance 
on the breeze — 

Little brook, so simple so unassuming — and yet how 
many things love thee! 

Here where I have my nest, 

[And the white-throat through the day and through the 
long night sits patient on her brood among the grasses,] 

Lo! Sun and Moon look down and glass themselves in 
thy waters, 

[In the faithful watchful eyes of the bird they lovingly 
glass themselves;] 



TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 475 

And the wren creeps like a mouse from twig to twig, 
and utters her thin sweet note; and the willow-warbler 
chimes his endless cadence of gratitude; and the night-jar 
sweeps silently by in the dusk, and the pheasant at midday 
comes down from the wood to drink; 

And the trout balances itself hour-long against the stream, 
watching for its prey ; or retires under a stone to rest ; 

And the water-rats nibble off the willow leaves and carry 
them below the wave to their nests — or sit on a dry stone 
to trim their whiskers; 

And the little mouse, the water-shrew, walks (even like 
Jesus Christ) upon the flood, paddling quickly over the sur- 
face with its half-webbed feet ; 

And the may-fly practises for the millionth time the 
miracle of the resurrection, floating up an ungainly grub 
from the mud below, and in an instant, in the twinkling 
of an eye (even from the jaws of the baflied trout) emerg- 
ing, an aerial fairy with pearl-green wings; 

And the caddis-fly from its quaint disguise likewise 

emerges ; 

And the bee, as ever, hums, and the butterfly floats, and 
the little winged beauty with shining mail of crimson and 
blue— the ruby-tail— searches in and out of every crevice 
and chink for a suitable place for her eggs ; 

And the early daffodil and narcissus from the garden 
stray forward to peer into thy mirror; and the wild garlic 
in the shade, and in the sun the king-cups, fringe thy 

margin; 

And the prick-eared earth-people, the rabbits, in the still- 
ness of early morning play beside thee undisturbed, while the 
level sunbeams yet grope through the dewy grass; 



476 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

And the land-rail cranes its neck, to peer and peep from 
its cover; 

And the weasel canters by on its quest, and the loose- 
jointed fox returning from a foray; 

And the squirrel on a tree-root — its tail stretched far 
behind — leans forward to kiss thee, 

Little brook. 

For so many things love thee. 

Say, what indeed art Thou — that hast been my companion 
now these twenty years? 

Thou, with thy gracious retinue of summer, and thy 
fringes and lace-work of frost in winter, and icy tassels bob- 
bing in the stream; 

And sound of human voices from thy bosom all the day, 
and mystic song at night beneath the stars — 

What art Thou, say! 

While I have sat here, lo! thou hast scampered away, 
little brook, with all thy lace-work and tassels, 

Three hundred and fifty thousand miles; 

So quiet, so soft — and no one knew what a traveller thou 
wert; 

Three hundred and fifty thousand miles in these few 
years, and so thou hast flowed for centuries; 

And all the birds and fish and little quadrupeds have 
gone with thee, and herbs and flowers; 

Yet I sit here and prate as though I knew all about thee — 

And the country-folk too, who reckon thou camest to 
turn the Mill — they think they know all about thee. 

But now I see how, soft-footed, thou passest by on a 
secret quest. 

Cantering quietly down through the grasses, 



TOWARDS DEMOCJIACY 477 

And gatherest even from all wide earth and heaven thy 
w^aters together — to lave these turfy banks and the roots of 
the primroses; 

I see how thou sheddest refreshment and life on thou- 
sands of creatures — who ask no questions; 

Nor disdainest even to give the old millwheel a turn as 
thou goest, or bring me a tiny thought or two from thy store 
in cloudland, 

Little brook, so strange, so mystical, 

That all things love — though they know not what thy 
Name is. 

I see where thou passest graciously by, and hastenest 
seaward, 

Scattering once more thy waters to earth and heaven; 

And I pray thee take again these thoughts thou hast 
brought me. 

And bear away on thy bosom, and scatter them likewise. 



L 



Lo! What a World I Create 
O! what a world I create for my own, my lovers. 



As the moonbeams in winter gliding along the forest- 
glades reveal the beauty of the trees — the hushed soft masses 
of light and darkness, the mysterious depths, the thousand 
fairy outlines — all merged and blent in one serene Presence ; 

As a figure dimly seen, from glade to glade, from per- 
spective to perspective, through the wilderness wanders 
content — his soul with the forest-soul mated; 

So dear friends, dear lovers, through this world of mine 



478 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

that I weave for you here, methinks sometimes I see you 
moving. 

And I w^ait of you that in time you also spread worlds 
equally beautiful, more beautiful, for me, 

[Not in written words only, but in spoken words, or the 
mere sound of the voice or look of the face, and in beauties 
of body and limb and brain and heart, and in Seauty of 
deed and action, and in a thousand ways,] 

Forest-glades and glooms where I in turn (as indeed 
already) may dwell and dream and be content, mated to 
the soul thereof. 

Thus, dear ones, building up these spheres of ourselves 
continually for the joyance of each other, it shall come about 
that at length 

We shall need no other world, no other worlds. 



The End 



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